Philadelphia, again.

The funny thing about Philadelphia is that once upon a time, it was the setting for my first glimpse of adulthood. I was 16 and enrolled in a summer program for fellow media nerds at Penn. We were a group of hyper-motivated, weird kids who found ourselves and each other immensely fascinating. Living in a dorm together for six weeks - attending classes, working on projects, traveling - made for the coolest summer ever. (Yep, "coolest summer" for me involved school - go figure.) So this is what college is like, I thought. So this is what living in a city is like, I thought. I had the bug, and ended up attending college in Boston two years later, a city lover already. Boston was my first urban love, but without Philadelphia, it might never have happened.

Save for a quick weekend in college, I hadn't been back to the city since. This weekend, we hopped onto a quick 2-hour train (I'm giddy at how easy it is to do this now that we live in DC) and went to see the most fantastic play and stay with the most fantastic people. They're old friends of T's family and are responsible for things like this at our wedding:

A truly fantastic couple, H&D, married for over 30 years and still having goodbye makeouts each time one of them leaves to run an errand. Here's just one lovely thing about H&D: they say that T is the reason they ever married at all.

See, T's parents had tried and failed to set them up. They were all living in Philadelphia back then, and my in-laws arranged a meetup at a local bar. Only, the plan backfired - D went home with H's roommate instead of H. Oops.

Some time later, they were all going to a toga party and came to pick up H. She answered the door expecting to see my father-in-law. Instead, it was my father-in-law's pal D, the one who'd gone home with the wrong girl (who of course wasn't The One), and he was carrying a baby in his arms. That was little T decked out in a kiddie-sized toga. H couldn't resist the sight of D with the adorable towheaded baby. They were married six months later.

H & D still live in Philadelphia, in a 150-year-old townhouse on a great street in a neighborhood dotted with local businesses and neighbors who recognize each other. With a skyline right there. And everything walkable.

Upon our arrival, we engaged in Battle Martini: Shaken v. Stirred (I'm a stirred girl myself, it turns out).We explored historic sites, visited the building T lived in as a baby, and enjoyed delicious food. We saw a play honoring one of my heroes, and it was wonderful. We walked home and drank wine and played word games (T and I are out of practice). We woke up early and had breakfast at a little neighborhood cafe run by a French couple who are H&D's vacation buddies. Life is good for these two. Their daughter's almost out of graduate school and is moving to DC (!) in the fall. They're dialing back their workloads. They're ready to enjoy what's in front of them. The decade between 60 and 70, H told me, is what she calls "the sweet spot." They're living it.

And so throughout that weekend, more times than I could count, the Philadelphia thing hit me again. Once more, I got glimpses of what being a grown-up could look like. (Why yes, I'm still searching for that reality sixteen years later, aren't you?) This kind of life - the walking and the history and the knowing your neighbors and the local businesses and the vitality of it all - is very much the kind of life that T and I would like to build. Not to mention the kind of partnership that's at its center. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us to make it happen (DC real estate voyeurism can turn into panic and depression really quickly, it turns out), but it's what we want. Someday. Maybe sooner rather than later. Our Life Plan feels a little less tenuous having seen a model of it in action, even if the steps to get there still feel enormous and slightly mind-boggling.

So progress, then. Baby steps toward the Plan. Found, once more, in Philadelphia. Who knew?

Any "Philadelphia moments" for you all lately? I'd love to bask in everyone's inspiration for a bit. With spring in the air, life feels so hopeful right now.