What do you remember about being 26?
Early last March, I sat at the kitchen table of my Atlanta apartment and drafted an email.
I was about to turn 26 and felt rather unsure about it. Being 25 had somehow felt right to me, but I didn’t know what it meant to be 26 — it seemed to be a year without a purpose.
As my type-A mind tried desperately to assign it meaning, my fingers typed out a message. In the subject line I put the question I was seeking answers to: “What do you remember about being 26?”
In the body I wrote, in part, these words, then sent it off to more than 40 friends, family members and close professional colleagues at 9:01 p.m. on March 9, 2020:
If you’ll indulge me with a trip down memory lane — I am curious to know what you remember from your 26th year.
As a marathoner, No. 26 has often been associated with long, sometimes painful, runs … However, outside the course of a marathon, I have never given “26” much thought.
Where were you when you were 26? What do you remember? Serious or silly — I look forward to any anecdotes you’re willing to share.
The recipients ranged from friends just a couple of months older than me to my then 88-year-old grandmother. One friend on the thread died of cancer in October. She was just 31.
The replies came in almost immediately. My mother told me about finding out she would become a mother. My dad wrote, “Right after turning 26, we found out we were going to be parents. I remember this being a very optimistic time in my life. Everything was ahead of us and new.”
In fact, many wrote about having babies in their 26th year. Two people recalled separate adventures in Costa Rica. There were also tales of trips to Canada, Boston and Washington, D.C. There were memories of new jobs, new boyfriends and the first kiss with the person who became a life partner. Big moves and big world moments were shared.
But there were also memories of heartache and of great grief. Friends described how 26 was vital in laying the groundwork for who they eventually became and candidly told me about trying to find their way.
“I guess what I’m saying is, 26 was hard only to feel real relief once I entered my 30s,” one reply reads.
My paternal grandfather wrote: “At 26, I bought our first home. Then wondered how I was going to pay for it. In due time I figured out I needed a new job and luckily I found one … and stayed for 31 years. The rest as they say is history.”
My beloved big cousin, an expat in Paris, told me she spent the summer of her 26th year studying for the bar exam by day and watching “Sex and the City” on rented DVDs from Blockbuster by night. In my response to her, I asked “Has the global virus caused upheaval there?” It was the morning of March 10. I didn’t know then, but it would be the last day I worked in an office for the foreseeable future.
I had no idea when I asked people I love to recall their own 26th year that mine would be entirely defined by a pandemic. That it would, in fact, end up feeling like the long, hard slog of a marathon. That it would be complete with too much loss, nonstop news and seemingly endless anxiety. I didn’t know then that 26 will always stand out in my mind.
In her response, my maternal grandmother remembered being 26 in 1958 or as she joked “just yesterday.” Then, true to form, she offered a bit of advice: “So today you’re 26! Make a big notation in your mind’s computer; so that when you’re 88 and a grandchild asks what you were like at 26 … you get the idea!”
If anyone ever asks what it was like for me to be this age: I’ll tell them about the year we spent at home. The year we were distant from one another and looked for ways to bridge the gaps between us. The year spent on video calls for work, for school and for maintaining some semblance of a social life.
The year our collective grief sometimes felt too great to bear. The year I did puzzles and took bubble baths. The year I went walking every day to try to keep from going mad. The year I tried to make fancy cocktails and new recipes before usually opting to order take out instead. The year our country began to more seriously acknowledge systematic racism. The year of a contentious election cycle. The year I moved to Chicago.
For me, 26 won’t be memorable because of the birth of a baby or a big trip. Rather than grandeur, 26 has been about the little things: The signs in the windows of my neighbors that make me smile when I walk by, the afternoons spent reading in parks, the friends who always picked up the phone and the many ways we manage to make do.
At the end of the email last year, I earnestly offered the recipients “my sincerest thanks for making my life richer,” and while nearly everything else has changed that sentiment of gratitude remains.
