40

I have a very polar experience with birthdays in that I love them and want everyone to look at me and say they love me and talk about how beautiful I am and how they can’t believe they get to know me,

but also, I dread and deplore them, treating them like an unanticipated tragedy because to have a birthday is to be reminded that at some point you will stop having them.

 I have not been a person who has approached aging with much grace or surrender. I was resistant even to graduate from age 16 to 17. Seventeen seemed to me, to be a point-of-no return. All the years before were a joke. We were all, quite literally, just kidding around and then wham one day you can be drafted or tried as a (gasp) adult.

 I’m not sure which nonexistent crimes I felt ill-prepared to stand trial for at that time in my life, but I worried about it nevertheless. My friends raised my aging spirits with a set of youthful male strip-dancers that year. I now see that such a present might not age well, in the court of public opinion but all I can say is these boys were our dorky little friends, mostly from theatre, none of whom I had particular interest in seeing disrobe. Plus, they all kept their boxers on, so I felt that my morals remained safely intact.

 Twenty-seven was my “golden” birthday. I asked people to donate that number of dollars to a charity of my choice and to please also set me up with a gentleman caller if they knew of anyone who was avail. Many people generously gave the money. Two couples set me up on dates. They did not go swimmingly but the effort still made me feel pretty loved.

I turned thirty in a place where I had been living for only a year. One year, as far as friendship goes, is not necessarily long enough to share an existential crisis but I did know some folks well enough to invite myself over to their church small group meeting on the evening of my birthday.  “I don’t do well with solitary birthdays,” I explained. “I think it might be kinda bad if I just sit at home alone pondering my eventual demise.” They agreed with this assessment, said they’d be thrilled to have me join, and I’ve never celebrated a birthday without them since.

This week I turn forty and I’ve been a bit surprised at how giddy I am to take on this new identity, but I shouldn’t be.  I’m old enough now to be unsurprised at how surprising a life can be. To me, someone who is forty is a force. No one wondering whether you are too young and naïve to take the reins, no one presuming you are unworldly or unscathed. You don’t get to be forty by accident — even if it feels that way.  When you are forty — in one way or another, you’ve earned it. You might not be doing a great job at life but you have at least persisted at existing—and existence—I have heard, is an act of resistance.  

In some ways, I’ve been looking forward to forty since I was in my twenties, and I heard Oprah tell someone (Jennifer Aniston, I think) that she LOOOO----OOOO--VED her forties. “When you are forty,” she promised, “you just stop caring so much about what everyone else thinks—you don’t have time for it. You are just free.” That all sounded pretty good to me and I decided to try to get there a little earlier than that.

 This has been my attitude about most of life, plotting and planning to get any and everywhere earlier,

more efficiently,

more enthusiastically,

and if possible, more eloquently

than everyone else.

And I’m sure that way of being has worked for me a little bit here and there. I doubt I’ll ever be the sort of person who rolls their “evolved” elder eyes at the earnest effort of someone still striving, but little by little as I watch myself become both more and less with each passing year, I understand that expansion and erosion are as much the result of time passed as they are of energy. spent And, I am happy to report that time has done a number on me.

I heard a podcast episode once that was titled “This, I used to believe.” I love that prompt and ask it as frequently as I conceivably can without alienating all my loved and would-be loved ones.  Today, it seems like a pretty good midlife reflection vehicle, so here I am marking the falling away of old versions of myself that no longer seem as fully human as I hope to be.

 I used to believe in the American Dream, in two genders, and a just world.

I used to find comfort in the old hymn lyric “now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

I used to want men to objectify me, at least a little, so I would know I had capital in a capitalistic society.

I used to think I would never get home, sit down on the couch, and be too tired to “go back into town.”

I used to find solace in a labyrinthine system of sin and shame to keep me in my place.

I used to feel that God loved some loves more than other loves, even though God is love, which now seems, well, silly I suppose?

I used to believe, quite infamously in some circles, that allergies (and also germs) were not real-- just excuses for sensitive people to stay home and avoid life with the rest of us.

I used to presume that my back would always be there for me unknotted, unneedy, unremarkable  really,, as its only job was to be laid down upon or sat back against. (Or perhaps, on rare occasion, to be limber enough to win a wedding limbo line, but we are talking once, maybe twice a year here.)

I used to predict that by now I’d be better than I am, but I also used to believe that I was worse than I ever was.

I used to believe in one race, the human race. Bought the shirt and everything.

I used to trust that being a moderate would always keep one in good stead.

I used to report that “Boys and Girls” an early 2000s Freddie Prince Jr. flick was my favorite of all the films.

I used to think I’d be a better mother than all the other mothers out there and that would really show them, because there was always a “them” an all-time audience watching my every move needing to be convinced that I deserved my place on stage-- moved to laughter, to tears, to applause.

I used to believe that perfectionism was a virtue. Perhaps I believed this the most. But you all know that by now.

I hold fewer beliefs now. Still more than the average person probably but progress for me.  And I must admit, it is so nice to carry fewer judgments around. They really start to weigh a woman down, ya know.  And as I’ve already said, I don’t have the back for it anymore.

I don’t know what the next ten years of my life will be like.

I do predict I will be shocked on my 50th (should I be so lucky) with all that I have taken up and all that I have let slip away.

So, here’s to all that I will gain and all that I will lose.

To more of me and less of me with every passing year.

I used to believe this would be a sad day in my life.

Here’s to being wrong about many, many, more things.