On Birthday 41 and the Things I’ve Learned
Chicago, May 26, 2020, 3:26 a.m.
One of my favorite birthdays was my Jesus Birthday, the year I turned thirty-three. I’m not talking about the entire year, although, it was a great one with some pretty big moments, most impactfully, meeting my wife and harnessing my messianic powers—granted to all who turn thirty-three for the entirety of that year. (In 2012, there wasn’t a cave anywhere in the world that could hold me.) I’m talking about the actual day, May 26, 2012. I don’t remember the whole day, but I remember what must be the most important part.
I woke up early. Pre-dawn. I sat down at the keyboard in the office of the apartment I shared with no one else and I wrote for a few hours. On that day, the song “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen was spraying glittery rainbows all over the airwaves, and stomping through YouTube with its almost endless parodies, amateur dance party videos, and covers. I had just downloaded the tune and that early birthday morning, I listened to “Call Me Maybe” on repeat for four hours straight. That means I listened to that song nearly seventy-three times in a row. By the time the sun was up, I still wasn’t tired of it.
Here’s why that birthday was so great: It was near perfect. I was productive on the keyboard, I was up early, and I was listening to the most incredible sugary earworm I have probably ever heard. But I had long known that those three things make me a happy boy. And that’s why I find myself doing something similar today. Eight years later.
Some things don’t change. We are creatures of habit. But we’re also creatures of evolution, and while basking in the happiness that familiarity brings, we also find ourselves on our birthdays with a heart and a brain full of things learned. So, taking my inspiration from a Don Hall tradition of recounting those things leaned in the past year, here’s the short list of what my forty-first trip around the Sun has revealed to me.
Forty wasn’t scary, but inching past it is
We make a big deal of turning forty. It’s over the hill. It’s when our bodies start to lean into their decline. Turning forty didn’t scare me. Just a few weeks shy of my thirty-fifth birthday, I underwent surgery on my face to remove skin cancer. I was dating the woman who would become my wife then. We rented a small Wisconsin lake house for the birthday weekend and on the morning of May 26, I woke up early—as I’m wont to do—and stared long and hard at my freshly scarred face in the mirror. I came to terms with my age and mortality there. I think most people have that quiet conversation with themselves at forty. For me, turning forty was a breeze. It was only slightly more remarkable than any other birthday. But as I crept closer to forty-one this year, I learned that aging past forty is scary.
And now I’m here. And I feel fine. But, inching past forty is, from my perspective, means no longer heading toward opportunity, but to memory. There’s a pretty good chance that the majority of my dangerous, envelope pushing, law bending adventures are behind me. I’m no longer a full tank of gas with the open road laid out before me. I’ve got half a tank and pretty soon, I’ll need to start looking for a place to pull off and ditch this old hunk junk. But I still have a lot of places to go, things to see, stuff to do before that needle hits E and my maker calls me into his office.
I’m more afraid than I used to be
I’m afraid of good health failing. Not just mine, but that of my wife, my son, my dog, my parents, my in-laws, my brothers and their wives, my friends… None of this health fear is related to COVID-19. That, while a major concern, is the least of them. This is the worry of a man who appreciates all that is good.
I’m afraid of being mediocre. Of being unimpactful and ineffective. Have I impressed all I will impress? Have I done my best work? Am I out of ideas and the energy to come up with new ones? Do I still have time to impress myself? This has always been a concern, but I’ve never been afraid of it becoming a reality. Until now.
I’m afraid of being depressed. Not because I’m afraid of being sad. We all know depression is more than sadness. I’m afraid that the brain numbing and lethargy that comes with depression will become unshakable. Sadness passes, lethargy is a big, fat, couch-hogging motherfucker that can be almost impossible to get out of the house. It always claims squatter’s rights, and over forty, I’m at risk of pulling or breaking something by trying to push it out.
I am not as strong as I thought I was
I don’t know if this has as much to do with age as it does with cockiness. I thought I could hop up after twentysomething years of not running long distance and—boom—run a marathon. It wasn’t easy, which I didn’t think it would be, but I also didn’t think that my body would be so ill prepared that I’d end up breaking my leg just two weeks before Race Day. Do I need to take it easy? No. I need to take training seriously and never forget that practice is incremental and paramount.
Quiet solitude is a need to have, not a nice to have
No TV. No scrolling through the phone. Not even any music. That includes Carly Rae. I need to take time to be quiet, calm, still. What is that Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “Be quiet, be calm, say nothing…” Yeah, he was talking himself out of having a psychedelic meltdown, but the advice is good for those of us whose brains are easily overwhelmed with the everyday. For those of us whose ideas bound about like bunny rabbits on cocaine searching for a spilled can of Red Bull to lap up.
When I was younger, before I had cable TV and a phone with Facebook, the internet, and solitaire, I could easily sit down with myself, sometimes with a pen and notebook, and just be. Think. Tune out the world and let my mind go wherever. It’s a form of meditation. I learned the importance of seizing quiet solitude way back in my late teens, but this year has shown me how absolutely imperative it is.
Speaking of…
I really miss being a kid
Or really, I miss being around me as a kid. This has been a theme for a little over a year. It’s been discussed at length on The Literate ApeCast and I’ve been working on a book dealing with time and nostalgia. But it’s more than just nostalgia for me. Watching my son grow, it’s hard not to think about what things were like for me and my wife at that age. How can we be great parents based on what we learn from history? We talk to our parents about it a lot. At least, I do.
In many ways, we miss out on our own lives because we’re only getting one half of that experience. So, I don’t want to be a kid again as much as I want to spend time with myself as a kid. Ages twenty-one on down to one. I want to know what I was like back then, what it was like to know me. If I could do that, I don’t think I’d be so scared, as mentioned above, because I’d have a clearer picture of things. And it’s always better to venture ahead when you know where you came from.
But since this is an impossible feat, I’ll have to make a point to go back and read all my old writings. I’ve been teased for my record keeping, but it just might save my forties.
I can live in filth
The best part about living alone is that every mess is yours. The only person who can dirty up the kitchen you just cleaned is you. The only shoes you have to pick up are yours. The only ass you have to wipe is yours. Since moving in with Katie, and the dog, and having the kid, my worst fear have come to light: my home is in a constant state of dusty disarray. I tried to keep up, even stay ahead of the untidiness, but, I gave in. I no longer do a deep clean of every room and surface weekly. The only object with more dust on it than the TV stand is the vacuum. Does it bother me? Of course. Should I make better attempts to stay on top of things? Yes. Should I hate myself and be angry at the wife, dog, and kid when I don’t scrub and organize on a weekly basis? No. Because I’ll be fine. I’ll live. Not as well as I’d like to, but I’ll live. And if skipping the deep clean means I can spend more time playing with my son and that the dog doesn’t lose her goddamn mind barking at the vacuum, then that’s just fine. For now.
If I had been born a girl, my parents would have named me Katherine
Funny because that’s my wife’s name. My mom told me this just a few days ago. It warmed my heart when she said, “But, in a way, we got a Katherine after all.”
I can grow a beard
Thank God for this quarantine. I never would have let the thing go without the safety of Zoom and FaceTime calls. They allowed me to grow through the patchy and settle on whatever this is. It’s not the best beard, but I’ve seen worse. It took a good two and a half months to get to the point where I could start saying, “I have a beard.” If I were a Guess Who character, and the question was, “Does your person have a beard?” one would be required to answer, “Yes.” There’s no denying it. I really never thought I could, and I probably wouldn’t have ever attempted. But these computer cameras seem to make all of our physical imperfections disappear. Not sure how long I’ll keep it. Not sure I don’t look like a 1980s action movie uncredited terrorist. Not sure I don’t look extra Jewish now. No matter. These are unprecedented times and this is an unprecedented beard.
The past year has had its hardships and its big wins. I won’t complain. The year was full of life, which is all I’ve ever wanted out of my years.
See? Perfect.
