Birthday date night recap

Hi everyone,

I hope you're having a nice weekend. Right now it feels like hurricane weather in Brooklyn... lots of wind and rain. It makes me want to curl up in bed, but I'll write to you first.

So, the birthday date night was a lot of fun. Let me tell you all about it!

Mark texted me to meet him at Brooklyn Heights Wine Bar, where the night started with exotic cocktails (he tried a Whiskey Fig Fizz; I tried a Cherry Caipirinha) and yummy appetizers. We chattered about interesting articles we each had read in Wired magazine, reminisced about our second date aboard the "classy" Staten Island Ferry, and chirped on and on about lots of other topics.

Energy charged across our little table, as if it were indeed a date back from our early days. Even our waitress felt it, so she granted Mark's request to let us watch the bartender as she made his fancy cocktail. While at the bar, we befriended some of the bar dwellers and soon several eyes were on the bartender as she prepared his beverage (which included fig preserves and an egg white). That's one of the things I love about Mark: he makes friends wherever he goes. Sally had that quality, too. (Random women in the grocery store used to spill their problems to her!).

Dinner followed at a fancy restaurant nearby called Le Petit Marche. We sat at a great table right up front looking outside onto the sidewalk. I found out later that Mark had asked them to save that table for us. So romantic!

At dinner we talked about the balance between our little "family" (the two of us living together) and our immediate families who raised us. Between Mark and I moving in together, my dad selling my childhood house, and me turning another year older, I feel a sudden lurch into womanhood that sometimes feels exciting and sometimes feels rattling.

As a little girl, my mother often scolded me on birthdays. She'd climb into my bed the night before, put her arms around me, and say, "Didn't I tell you not to get a year older?" Since I was the youngest, she wanted me to stay her baby. This often made me feel guilty so I'd roll my eyes and say, "Mom, I have to get older!" Now, years later, I feel the same way: like there's nothing I can do to stop time, and even if I could, I wouldn't want to -- I have to get older.

Have you ever had this feeling: the recognition that right now, right in this very moment, you're growing up fast?