43

I spent the last day of my 30s in Sweden. September is a month of birthdays and an anniversary for us, so it’s always been a fun time for travel.

I took the selfie above at Skea, likely a short walk from where my great-great grandfather, Jöns, was born 170 years earlier.

His birthplace is listed as the Skea hytta, which I understand to be an iron-smelting spot. At 36, he, his wife Anna, and 3 children made the journey on the Elbe to New York.

It’s wild how easy and safe it was for us to get from Pullman to Skea and back in 2019.

A few months later a global pandemic broke out. A few years later here we are.

43 is a strange marker of how fast the last few years have passed. After all the travel we did in 2019, how is it possible we’ve been home for three years running? Where did 41 and 42 go?

But also my 40s have been great!

The lack of travel hasn’t made the years empty, just different. We have an absolutely wonderful son who just celebrated his first birthday. We bought a house. We’ve had plenty of conversation with friends and family.

This is all such a loose collection of thoughts, and really just a marker, but one thing I’ve thought quite a bit about recently, is:

The world is immeasurably small, in distance and in time. Moments are worth enjoying.

Happy 43 all you 79ers!