Thirty feels like a small threshold you step over without noticing until you look back and realize the room has changed.
This photo catches the moment before the night blurs into laughter and louder music: three friends pressed close, coupe glasses raised, a gold fringe curtain behind us catching every bit of light. It’s silly on purpose. The kind of silly you can only commit to when you’re surrounded by people who have known you long enough to not ask you to be anything else.
Birthdays can make you count things—years, plans, what’s next—but nights like this pull you back into something simpler. The warmth of a crowded room. The shine of cheap decorations that somehow feel like celebration. The easy, familiar lean-in for a photo, the kind that says we’ve been here before and we’ll do it again.
I keep thinking about how memories live alongside you, the way a house creaks in winter or how a coat becomes part of a routine. Friendships do that too. They quietly collect in the background, then show up all at once when you need a reason to toast.
Silly 30th birthday with the boys—gold, laughter, and the kind of night that leaves you grateful the next morning.
