Today I am forty-two. I am closer to my fifties than my twenties – an observation which of course was true before today, but which I failed to make until now. And I’m totally fine with this fact. The friends I have in their fifties are all bad asses. And though I love them, the friends I have in their twenties are almost all dipshits. In your twenties, even if you have a great career, you’re frequently doing stuff you don’t want to do – like reading 10,000 emails because they all have the word “asbestos” in them. In your fifties, even if you are doing something you don’t want to do, it’s usually rare, and it’s probably still pretty cool and something that needs to be done by you specifically, because of superpowers you’ve developed over years – like flying to New York to explain to a Federal Magistrate why your client isn’t going to pay anything to a plaintiff with an ego and a sense of entitlement that has heretofore somehow compensated for and eclipsed his dearth of shame and paucity of intellect. Or at least it had, until his ill-advised lawsuit summoned you into his world.
But I’m ahead of myself. At forty-two, I have the life I wasn’t brave enough to hope for in my twenties. Indeed, my biggest crisis today is imagining how I’m supposed to top this. If life is a process of growth, where am I supposed to grow now? And isn’t trying to get there just greedy, or foolish, or undignified? Today: happy father, husband, pretend writer and man of semi-leisure – tomorrow: Crown Prince of Awesomeland and Unanimously Certified Best Human on Planet!
As I sit here, I don’t have answers. But I do have a focused appreciation for the now, and all the good it contains.
Last birthday involved an epic pub crawl. As much as I appreciate all manner of Dionysian pursuits, I decided to contrast the Bacchanalia of last year with a sober experience of the little things I enjoy, with the little beings I love. Highlights of today include:
- Sleeping in until 8AM, which in this house means I’m Rip Van Winkle;
- Trying a new breakfast joint over the anxious objections of my family, and then chiding them as they enjoy said new breakfast joint in spite of themselves;
- Visiting the dog park to get my dog some exercise, only to watch my children run around with the dogs while my dog sat at my feet;
- Reading the NYT while my kids climb on me, and only retaining a fraction of whatever I just read as a result;
- Teaching my children to make two kinds of strombolis, and then delighting as they eagerly devour them;
- Visiting the library so my kids can pick out a whopping 27 new picture books to make for more awesome bedtimes for them and me;
- Spending seven distracted minutes to compile a haphazard 42nd birthday playlist and then playing it on repeat all day long because you’ve realized it’s the One Playlist To Rule Them All:
- September by Earth, Wind & Fire;
- Happy by P. Williams;
- Birthday by The Beatles;
- Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing by S. Wonder
- Let The Groove Get In by J. Timberlake
- Get Lucky by Daft Punk
- Jambalaya by H. Williams
- California Sun by Ramones
- The Man In Me by B. Dylan
- Jungle Boogie by Kool & The Gang
- Deep Dish by A. DiFranco
- No Place Left to Hide by J. Hernandez & The Deltas
- Skeleton Key by Dessa
- The Obvious Child by P. Simon
- Dancing In the Dark by B. Springsteen
- One Particular Harbor by J. Buffet
- The King Knows How by Over the Rhine
- Smooth Operator by Sade
- Savoy Truffle by The Beatles
- Eye of the Tiger by Survivor
- Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran
- Heat of the Moment by Asia
- Goodbye to You by P. Smyth
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Metallica
- Drafting this blog entry while watching my kids on the trampoline, in the sprinkler, “jump dancing” to the aforementioned playlist;
- Getting takeout fajitas;
- And soon, pulling out the sofa bed and piling onto it to escape the floor-turned-lava and watching the original Karate Kid.
There’s magic in every day. But we mark certain days to remind us to take a moment and notice it. I have. And as a result, it has been a very happy birthday indeed.