On my 40th birthday, years away from finding out I was adopted, I felt badly for my mom. Here was a woman, so I believed, who had tried for years to have children (I think that part's true) and finally had me when she herself had seen 40 come and go. I wondered what must it be like realizing this "late in life" baby was reaching the "welcome to middle-age" milestone. I assumed the answer was not great. I actually got her a present and gave it to her as we stood in line for dinner at Dave and Buster's, which is where she insisted we all go.
That day was memorable for a lot of reasons, many of which were not celebratory, so I don't think I even fully realized how much of a stressful day it was for her until literally right now, but the tell was that she had orchestrated it all around the things she wanted to do: it was her choice to go out and eat (and refused to take no for an answer) and where. Maybe she didn't give birth to me, but she could do the math, and if I was 40, that put her squarely in her 80's. There were a lot of people going through a crisis at that table that night, as it turns out. Any mid-life crisis I might have been having was the very least of them. The food, however, was surprisingly good.
When my husband and I were the same age my daughter is now, give or take, we lived in a modest house on the far north end of Austin. The kids became friends with some of the other kids on the street, as children are better than adults at doing, and two of the families joined ours with having at least one member who had a late May, early June birthday (I was the only outlier in my family), so we would gather together and have a group celebration every year we lived there. I don't keep in touch with the adults any longer, but I'm still in touch with one of the boys. His 40th birthday was the week before last. When the notification came up on Facebook, I stared at it for a minute, then blinked rapidly a few times, like maybe I wasn't seeing it right. My brain wasn't quite comprehending that here this young boy my girls played with was now older than I was when that was happening.
He stood in the front of the line to a lot of birthdays for that generation: my oldest daughter would have turned 38 four days later, my niece saw her own 40th a few days after that, and my youngest woke up to 35 a week ago tomorrow.
I gotta tell you, it's a mind(bleep).
It's not that I think they're old. Or that I'm locked in to a vision of them only as children and cannot grasp that they are functioning adults. And it's not the same as what I think my mom was going through, which I believe was a fear of death (because she definitely was afraid of it). I'm actually not sure I know to describe what this feeling I'm having is precisely.
I will say I thought of myself in my 30's as firmly entrenched in adulthood, meaning I perceived that I had been one for so long. After all, if I had been a football or hockey player, I would be referred to as a veteran at that point and people would be wondering when I was going to retire. When in fact, with this new perspective, I realize that wasn't the case. I was still pretty new playing this game of life. Nor was I as mature as I thought I was. (I learn that I'm not as mature as I ought to be on an almost daily basis, so...you know that's not a new realization really.) As I hit 40 I didn't think of myself as old exactly, but I did, again, think that I'd been at this adulting thing for a good, long time. Now when I see my generation's kids turning these ages, and I remember things they did, things they said, things they wore when they were in elementary school like it was just a few months ago, and it sends me reeling.
Pondering this further, I confess that there is some benign fear of being closer to the end than the beginning, but it's not that I think I'm about to fall off the cliff or anything. It's more a matter of the fact that all has me realizing how precious time is, and how fast it slips through our fingers. And how, when I was in my 30's and 40's I was so busy just going and doing, I never stopped to just appreciate being who and what I was in that moment, and who I had in my life. At that age, it tended to be about trying to be something more than I was. To be fair, that wasn't just selfish, it was for my kids that I wanted that but I wish I had taken more time with them when they were young enough to still want my company, because I can see now how truly brief a time that is. But you can't get that back. There are no do-overs.
Yeah, I think that's it. That's the crisis: it went so quickly, and I was blissfully ignorant back then, but having all these "kids" turn certain milestones has removed that veil of ignorance.
Bottom line is you think you'll have time. Time to save for retirement. Time to take vacations. Time to enjoy your children. Time to read all those books and see all those movies. But to bastardize a line from one of my favorite songs, Time Does Not Stand Still.
For any readers in that 30-50 year old range, take note. Slow down and take your time now.
For my generation, all I can say to us is: don't squander what's left. Live, don't just exist.
