Today I am 40 years old, which is a terribly sobering number/fact/thing to come to terms with. It's the Rubicon of aging, where no one's mistaking you for a spring chicken, where teenagers pre-emptively blot you out of their visible environment, and only the government really cares what you do with your human (aka: earning) potential.
It's the age of pity. When I realized I was chewing through my 20s, but oh well, my thirties were going to be one long party that would never end, I would look almost disbelievingly at friends who crossed the 40 line ahead of me. Wow, I would think. It's totally over for you! Whew! Glad that's not me, (and will never be me)!! 40 seemed an always distant milestone that I'd never catch up to.
It's also an age shrouded in a Romulan cloaking device. You know it's there, because you can see in front and behind it, but the cloaking device prevents you from being able to clearly focus your perceptions. My teenager brain looked at my parents turning 40, and thought- wow, 40 is OLD. 40 is more than half-way dead already. 40 looks old, dresses old, reads old books, and thinks old, irrelevant thoughts. There's not even wisdom at 40, that takes another 30 years, so all you get at 40 is kids, debt, wrinkles, job pressures, and no fun. Like the Romulans, 40 appears suddenly one day, like doom on a distant horizon, and clobbers you with photon torpedoes, ugly taunts and its bad hair...
No wonder then that I spent a solid couple of minutes looking at my face in the mirror this morning, wondering what parts of my face would start sliding around first, and a little surprised that I still look so much like my 30 year old self. I realize it's a Jedi mind trick. Like one newly born, I am self-soothing. I've got some grey hairs and "smile lines" now, though I can kind of pretend they're not really there; more or less overlook them and their entrenchment. I feel that I've seen this episode somewhere before, and I wouldn't mind changing the channel before next week's heart-stopping cliff-hanger is revealed. It's all getting a little intense, if you know what I mean.
On the weekend, my family threw me a 40th party. I was actually scared to walk through the door, knowing what was going to be in store. I stood stock-still outside, knowing they all knew I was on the other side of the door, and that they were counting the seconds before they could pounce. I had trouble making my own elbow bend, to let my hand actually touch the door-handle. For a brief instant, I recalled the criminal Cottard at the very end of Camus' The Plague, and let time stretch improbably while I breathed in the smell of the grass, the Ontario fall flavours of the air, and felt the sun warming my skin. While I was caught in this weightless revery, my hand accidentally touched the handle, there was a flash, and I was inside the swarm.
I imagined that everyone was looking at me more intently, either wondering at how I got so old, and bookmarking a "what 40 looks like" ribbon in their young little brains, or else from the other side, wondering at how fast they themselves went from looking semi-young at 40 to absolutely ancient at 50. (Sorry Neil!) At 50, things are unarguably beginning to slide around, and I suspect there isn't even that grace moment of suspension before the birthday door-handle, either. The universe has too many things to get done, without waiting for us to plant a false but gracious smile on our tectonic features. Imagine the naivety of thinking we can indulge ourselves forever. IN YOU GO, Old Girl, it will say, ushering me through, just the way I lift Dallas' unwilling rump and propel her out the door each morning.
So walk in I did, and I was immediately grabbed and garbed in a hula skirt, flowery leis, and handed a plastic coconut with a straw and some pina-colada. The rum fell into the category of small mercies. They tried for further humiliations, but at successive indignations I put up a fight, but was then surprised to see my dad demonstrating his hula dance, complete with my outfit plus the coconut bra I refused. Ok... I was given an awful hat that trumpets, "I'm not 40, I'm 18 with 22 years of experience!" My birthday cake absolutely did set off the fire alarm, to the appreciative (and let's face it: vindictive) hoots of everyone there. We had a limbo contest, we had balloon fights, (where the nefarious, rule-changing Darnells dominated, I will just mention), and then I was allowed to sing several more songs than usual in Rock Band before I was relegated to quiet strumming. I was allowed the biggest piece of cake. All in all a memorable, great day, and I wasn't completely roasted. I felt the privilege of being loved.
This morning, as soon as I stirred, Kate pounced on me with her presents, and was up making me breakfast and coffee. Along with a cool new running jacket, and various wind-resistant gloves and hats, and sundry- she also gave me the new iPhone 3G I've been busy denying myself for two years. : ) I was pretty deliriously happy with that one. It's a real vote of confidence in my Modevation project too, and it's appreciated.
In other news- Kate rearranged the Airstream furniture while I was in London with family, and surprised me with it Sunday evening. Making any changes to anything structural in this thing is strictly verboten, but I have to admit, she really opened the place up. She also more or less single-handedly finished our winterizing projects.
The reason Kate couldn't come on Saturday was that Dallas needed rushed in to the vet Saturday morning for what looked like a mangled, stinking, mess on her foot. It was just the nail that was messed up, but still- they had to saw it off near the paw, which meant local anaesthetic, antibiotics, and various other types of over-care. Dallas also had a high fever, so we didn't have the option of dragging her to London and putting her into a raucous environment the whole weekend. But Dallas is healing, and all is well.
This Saturday, you are invited out to Green Acre Park, site 76 sometime around 7pm for (yes my third!) birthday celebrations. It's Halloween that night, so anytime you can make it is perfect. Costumes are encouraged, but not required. I believe Kate intends to perform magic, and turn the airstream into a submarine. She is going as a… jellyfish, and I will be a pirate again this year, if I can find my get-up in all our moving boxes. Later, we'll head over to Club Ren for a few more hours of dancing and fun. We'd love to see you.
If you're still reading this blog after all these years- thanks for being my friend.
