Forty is the New Forty

Michael Grant bathes in the Ganges in Rishikesh back in the past when he was only 39.

The stages of death—anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance—may also be used to chronicle the way I am experiencing the departure of my beloved thirties.  As I enter into an unknown decade, one that appears to be populated by greying rogue hairs, andropause, lowered metabolisms, higher cholesterols and the stirrings of future creaks and nasty tennis injuries,  I wonder:  Will my forties be marked by a rapid anatomical decline, or am I, perhaps, on the verge of my most empowered decade?  Will I, like Don Draper, master my craft and rule my dominion?  Will I value myself?  Will I make more money?  Will I make keener choices?  Do I still have more to learn?  Will I eat better?

The difference between ten and twenty was tremendous, but the difference between twenty and thirty seemed marginal. So why does thirty-to-forty feel like a larger leap than the other two combined? What is it about turning forty that instigates the mid-life crises where men dump their wives and buy sports cars and women dump their friends and start new careers?  Why all the madness and misery?  Why when we admit we actually feel okay about turning forty do our peers remark that we're 'handling it well'?  Out of a possible 300,000 words in the English language, the only one that accurate describes turning forty is FUCK.  Why?

Anger.  I don't want to turn forty, except that the alternative of not turning forty seems worse.  I feel like throwing shoes and throwing up.  When I make the bed today I'll undoubtedly smash my pillows a little more than is necessary for their plumping fluff.  Doors beware, you may be slammed.  I'm pissed that the illusion of time is so readily palpable and defining.  I'm vexed that there's no attractive alternative.  When I was growing up I had a friend with a tattoo on his foot that read 4/12/2012.  He claimed it was his expiration date and if he wasn't "something" by then he would throw a big party and kill himself.  I told him if he wasn't "something" then no one would know about his party and it would be a flop. I have to find him.  I have a compulsion to slap him today because of my anger because of this turning-forty thing.  I'm generally not like this.

Denial.  I FEEL nineteen.  Well, maybe twenty-three.  Okay, twenty-seven.  Certainly no more than thirty-one.   Or thirty-five.  I remember everything I experienced as a child, which was just a few clicks back on my mental calendar, so how can I possibly be forty?  My DAD is forty.  Well, he was.  Once.  A long time ago, yeah, yeah...  So turning forty may have happened to all of my friends and most of my family and even strangers at the supermarket, but that doesn't mean it has to happen to me.  People tell me forty is still young, but it was easier to believe when they were jealous I was thirty.  Now I'm harder to convince.  Who are these people, anyway?  Forty?  I deny this.  I was asked for my ID at the liquor store just last week.   I have the jawline of a teenager and the wonder of a toddler.  I can beat this.   Clearly they made that cake with all of those candles for someone else...

Bargaining.  If I can get to Hawaii before midnight I may be able to salvage just a few more hours in my thirties...

Depression.  This is how it goes.  One day you're practicing backflips in your backyard and thinking that people in college are really old and really smart, and then you're looking at your friends' kids who are about to enter college and you're wondering when the higher institutions started admitting children.  The student becomes the master, except I don't feel like I've mastered anything yet.  When I turned thirty I had rental properties and a store and a successful film festival and a nifty house and a reliable social community.  I had a savings account.  I had all of my grandparents. Now I'm turning forty and the house needs a lot of work, the social community has slimmed, and the rest is gone for good.  The yard is bare, the rains come, the grass grows and the flowers bloom, the bees hum and the butterfies frolic.  Then the grass gets cut, the tomatoes are picked, the sun sets early and the yard yields to the first crunchy frost.  Forty is an August mowing.  The cut.  The line.  (Sigh).

Acceptance. Okay, my life is good.  Really good.  Great, actually.  Follow this logic: if I didn't turn forty I wouldn't be able to celebrate eighteen beautiful years with my husband.  I've learned about loss, both in business and personally, and I've survived with new skills and instincts.  I've learned how to say NO to the things I don't want to do, or be (okay,  maybe I'm still working on that).   And I have new abilities: I can wake up earlier without being so bothered.  I can take time to read or play piano or walk the dog  without fretting about my other pressing responsibilities.  I can go into a grocery store and know how my food choices are going to affect me long-term.  I can spend money with some responsibility and I can make money doing jobs that don't compromise my values.  I pick better movies to watch.  I have gained the luxury of (a modicum of) hindsight.

And I still have goals.

If I'm forty then I'm closer to realizing my dreams than I was when I was twenty or thirty.
If I'm forty then I'm closer to gaining the wisdom of my grandparents.
If I'm forty then I'm closer to relating to my parents and their own experiences of life.
If I'm forty then my adventures will take on a new immediacy which will empower their enactment.
If I'm forty then my teachers were right and one day I did grow up.  Or at least on the surface.

I'm forty.  It's impossible, but it's true.  It's ridiculous, but it's fact.  It's astonishing and it's accurate.
Some might say it's an accomplishment.  Others say it's not a big deal and they are correct, too.
I'm forty and it's good to be forty.
People take you seriously when you're forty.
They may even believe what you write on your blog.

MG 

Happy Birthday to Me

Once a year I’m plagued by the creeping persistence of Time.  I do my best to combat him.  I once tried to put him in a tiny box buried deep in the yard covered in dung, but he escaped and now I smell him coming...  Still, I do what I can.  I sleep regularly and often, attempt to eat properly, exercise persistently and I refrain from the obvious things that make people look prematurely old, like smoking, sunbathing and working in Alaskan canneries.  I moisturize.  While this is further proof I’m gay, it’s also a conduit to wondrous remarks like, “Really?  You’re 38? I would have thought 29!”  This puts a smile on my face until I realize that one day they might just as easily state, “Really?  You’re 68?  I would have thought 59!”  Still, it beats being 98 and looking 89.   Side note: Not having kids seems to help with all the aforementioned skills. If you have kids, feel free to keep them but know that they are the ones who make 39 look like 39.  Or 44. (gasp!) 

I love when other people have birthdays, not because of the inherent schadenfreude or the chance to eat cake, but because it gives me a moment to honor and celebrate the birth of the great beings I call my friends and loved ones.  It’s a good excuse for sending a Facie (facebook friend) a note letting her know I care, I’m excited she continues to exist and thrive, and with each passing year there’s hope we can one day reunite and drink a box of wine or spray paint a rival school’s pump house like the old days.  Birthdays are the spillway to reminiscences and introspection and in moderation, perhaps 1/365th of the time, this can be glorious. 

But, unfortunately, birthdays mark time and the marked time corresponds to my ever-increasing age.  This appears to be the evil lurking purpose.  I fully enjoy the beneficial attention that surrounds my birthday, but just like Ambien or Percocet I have great difficulty with the nefarious side effects.  Each birthday brings even more candles to delicious cakes I now fear may trigger adult-onset diabetes.  A higher age number means I have a lowered necessary heart rate to achieve “cardio level” on my treadmill,  and now I get higher BMI readings on my scale.  I have more frequent thoughts about the continued viability of my prostate and colon.  I have weaker ankles, greyer hairs (and in weirder places) and the inability to remember plot lines from last season’s television shows.  It's humbling.  Why can’t I keep the abs I had when I was 28?  Why can’t I keep the vision I had when I was 24?  Why can’t I keep the credit score I had when I was 20? 

Everyone wants birthdays but no one wants to consider the brutality of the aging process.   While I’ve truly loved every age I’ve ever been (except eleven—that was a rocky year) it’s still tough to consider that I’m on the cusp of the cusp of 40 which is practically 50 which is nearly 60 which is practically 110.  When my grandmother turned 80 we had a conversation and she confided that she still isn’t sure what she wants to be when she grows up.  She’s more-or-less ruled out ballerina.  That sucks.

While I would likely loathe a return to any prior age, I harbor an equal aversion to attaining the numeric constructs of my future ages.  Of course, sometimes I get scared I might not reach those ages, so I tacitly repeat to myself, on my birthday meditation at 12:36am every August 2nd, my ninth and tenth mantras:   मैं खुला रहा हूँ. मैं यहाँ हूँ  (I Am Open, I am Here).  Every year brings new possibilities, opportunities, vistas, vision and treasures.   And yes, every year also takes me closer to my driver’s license expiration date, but I’m prepared to overlook the petty negatives—on the first day. 

Today I am 39.  There, I said it.  I’m not sure I feel better for saying it, but considering the alternative, I shall remain quietly jubilant and thankful.  Now where's my fucking cake?

PS: A decided advantage to aging is more scratch-off lottery tickets in the envelope from thoughtful friends [hint, hint].