Show and Tell

Upclose: Facing Forties Passionately

 

On my own

The man behind me grabs my bag as he helps me mount my hand luggage in the overhead cabin. Feeling a sigh of relief that I’ve finally settled on my seat, my anticipation builds up during the15 hour flight to Milan. It dawns on me that it’s been 12 long years since I travelled by myself, checked in my bag myself and looked for the boarding gate myself.

12 years of pure bliss

I’m thinking how my past twelve years were pure bliss raising up my children and establishing a business with my husband. I am a practicing interior designer married to an engineer. I realize having an engineer as a husband like my husband, those years were calculated, organized and well planned.  I am used and dependent on his ways without knowing it.

I find myself heading to Milan, Italy…alone this time …. to fulfill a dream — to study at the prestigious Istituto Marangoni Design School.

A sense of insecurity lingers within me.

Rediscovery

This all happened two years ago. I was turning 40.

I slowly settle in my hotel room and open the wide doors to the balcony. A mixed feeling of excitement, anxiety, happiness and a bit of sadness  concocts within me.  It’s been 12 years since I have been alone like this without my husband and my children.

I get the  same feeling whenever my children ask me to join them in ice skating or show them how to do a handstand and land on a bridge!

I remember knowing how to do it when I was so much younger but the anxiety of doing it all over again after many many years was the same anxiety boiling….. surfacing.

I’m wishing my husband and kids were with me. But in spite of all emotions, gratefulness overrules it all.

After 2 kids, more than 10 years married, and turning 40 . . . . I realize this is a dream coming true.

“ I will make the most out of this!” saying to myself, I rush out with anticipation to attend my first day of class.

Like a kid,  with eyes and ears wide open, I go through the days hungry for learning.

 

View from my balcony

 

First day of classes

I think I should be checking out my class assignment from that screen.

 

That’s my classroom… I found it!

 

Getting to know my classmates at the classy Dolce and Gabbana Gold at Via Carlo Poerio, Milan.

Whoa! Loving the interior design at Dolce and Gabbana Gold at Via Carlo Poerio, Milan

 

 

 

Celebrating new friendships and dreams fulfilled just a few weeks before turning 40 at la Rinacente Rooftop, Milan 

 

 Fabrics, fabrics and more fabrics.

 

I have read so many things about turning 40. Most if it saying life begins; I never quite understood what that meant until it was my turn.

At this age, you know yourself much more. Just like shooting a bow with an arrow, you know your hands are more stable and you are more consistent with your grip, your aim more focused and your breathing more steady than before. Your stance, just right; and when you finally decide to shoot, you know it’s not just a motion your going through but you’re aware of those around you, behind you and the very reason why you are standing where you are.

Life does begin at 40. You worry less and you live more.

My eyes are wider, heart bigger and I see things clearer. Enough to understand and appreciate that all things that happen in ones life,  including all the failures and rejections, are essential in blowing you to the direction exactly where you are suppose to be.

 

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