I turned forty-eight today and spent almost all of it in my own house.
My son made waffles. My family gave me cards, and the things written in them were better than the presents (and the presents were awesome too!), which is a thing you can say honestly at forty-eight and mean it.
Then we went grocery shopping. All three of us, because the house needed food, and we talked and laughed our way through a store for an hour doing something completely ordinary that I don’t get to do on a workday. They picked up what they needed to make me a pineapple cheesecake, which is one of my favorite desserts I haven’t eaten in forever.
Pizza for lunch. A nap. Kung Fu Panda, which I hadn’t seen in years. Then hamburgers and Trouble with the Curve, which I’d never seen and which is a whole separate post.
That was the day. Waffles, groceries, a nap, two movies, and cheesecake.
It’s the best birthday I’ve had in a long time.
We were out earlier and my son ran into some friends at a coffee shop. One of the girls wished me happy birthday and asked if I’d gotten everything I wanted.
I told her I’m getting to be a little bit of an old man, and that the older you get the less you want — you mostly just want to be around the people you love, and I was doing exactly that.
I said it to be friendly. Then I thought about it and realized I’d told her the truth.
There were more than sixty messages by the end of the day. Some of them were the auto-generated kind and that’s fine. A lot of them weren’t. People from a long way back who wanted me to know they were still out there and still thought well of me.
My wife got me a couple of bottles of wine we’d had on the cruise a few weeks ago. She knew I liked them but wouldn’t likely get around to getting them. She was just paying attention, the way she does, and bought them without saying a word.
My son’s gift is that he’s taking me out to eat and paying for it himself. An experience instead of an object, which is an awesome present. Time with him and good food? That’s a win.
I’m in better shape at forty-eight than I was at forty. Stronger, lifting more, and considerably better at my job. More patient than I used to be, and steadier.
What I’ve lost is the not thinking about it. When I was young the future was theoretical. It sat out there somewhere and I never once did math on it. Now it’s close enough to see and I do the math without meaning to.
That’s a strange thing to say for a man who has had cancer twice and should have lost that feeling at twenty-six. But that sense of being invincible is stubborn, and it does eventually go.
Here’s the part I’ve been turning over.
I’ve always thought of fifty as halftime. It’s a comfortable frame — I’d be genuinely grateful for another fifty, and it lets you feel like the second half hasn’t started.
If I’m honest, I’m in the third quarter. And I’ve got some ground to make up.
The thing I don’t want to carry into forty-nine is the inability to act. That, and the assumption that a thing won’t be well received before anybody’s had the chance to receive it. Neither of those has ever been true and both have cost me.
The wine is still in the house, unopened. I am saving it for some special occasion down the road.
I’ve got no idea yet what the occasion is. But I’m counting on there being one. A random Tuesday may work too.
David Willis 