Another milestone to reflect on life a bit today: my 60th birthday. It sounds so old, but I biked 60k total on Monday and Tuesday (didn't have time for it in one go), and played pickleball today, and I'm regularly writing 3,000 word essays, so I appear to still be reasonably sound in body and mind.
I was hoping my crabapple would bloom for my birthday, but everything bloomed early this year. A couple years ago I wrote about some people who randomly walk by, loudly insisting my crabapple is dead. It's still not dead yet! These are the very last of the lilac blooms from my garden. Such a weird year.
I've been retired from teaching for just three years, but still work three days a week as a career counsellor. I took yesterday off work, and, if I didn't work at all, I'd lose that mischievous excitement of an unplanned "mental health day." It's like cheating time to gain an extra day.
I was thinking today of all the decade celebrations that I can and can't remember. I can remember the birthday party I had at 11, and everyone who came, but not my 10th at all. My 19th was big, living in a divey old house with five guys. I mainly remember using rubbing alcohol to clean the ink from my doctored birth certificate (I was the go-to to change everyone's 1965 to a 1963) to get my "Age of Majority" card and legally buy beer for the first time. And I remember what I wore: a bright pink sweatshirt dress that just barely covered my butt, off one shoulder, with a thick black belt, bright pink pumps, and a pink lacy bow in my hair, carefully tilted to the side. It was peak 80s. My boyfriend took me to the Keg for dinner. The parties at the "big house" all melded together, so I forget the rest of the night. I have no memory of my 20th at all. I think I was a claims reviewer in a huge insurance company by then, and I lived with a few of the same guys but in a much nicer house, appropriately coined, the "nice house". We used to collect money from people as they left our many "extravaganzas" so we could pay all the noise fines. We used any excuse to have a party, so I'm pretty sure I had one, but I have few memories of that place when it wasn't jam-packed full of people with a band playing in the dining room. Seriously, who were all those people??
My 30th was a weird one, so very memorable. I was a respectable teacher now, and I joked with a colleague that I was going to throw myself a surprise party. He offered to throw it for me at another teacher's place, and I gave him a list of friends to call. For some reason he called people, but told them to call back for details, and then went away on a trip. This was long before cell phones. It ended up being just teachers, and many of them I had literally never interacted with before. They were my colleague's friends. I didn't react enough when they said Surprise!, and that got one woman very angry. She kept complaining to me about how weird it was, even after I explained that it wasn't really a surprise party. Then one of my non-work friends showed up, and we drank our faces off and danced in a corner. The worst part: the guy who offered his house for the party kept wanting me to come for a "private drink" with him, and I spent most of the night avoiding him. That was painful, and I felt horrible for not wanting to have some private alone time with him, after he hosted my party and all, but I really, really didn't. The next day I got call after call from friends who got the invitation but no address. So, ya... memorable!
My 40th was relatively uneventful as a mom with three small kids: I had some neighbours over, but invited some colleagues too who left soon after arriving. It wasn't their crowd. Someone once commented, when I wrote about having a house warming with friends and family, that it's an autistic trait to want to mix all your friends together! I've seen it done by NTs before, so I'm not so sure if that claim is true, but I've certainly never been able to manage it as successfully. I'm likely just a really bad host. I don't do that thing of introducing everyone to everyone else and finding them common ground to talk about.
By my 50th, I had got in a routine of having colleagues over for beers every other Friday, so I invited them over, as usual, but most people couldn't stay, and it was a bit awkward with the few who remained, as if coming for a birthday celebration was the wrong vibe for this group. Some brought gifts, and my kids asked me if they knew me at all. I didn't quite fit there. My kids and I celebrated on the actual day. They became the feature act.
I started this past decade as a perfectly healthy teacher, able to bike 150km in one go, living with my three kids, and with a bunch of friends who came over regularly. It was a struggle to get some time to myself! That was just ten years ago, but it was all before my two oldest kids moved out, then I got some writing published, and got cancer and had several surgeries which led to lymphedema, then my dad died, then my kids moved back in, and I bought my first car so they could all learn to drive, and bought some land up north to escape, then Covid happened along with the worst admin my school has ever had, and I stormed out of work on a random Tuesday, and became a flippin' trustee, then left that to go back to school for another masters, then the kids moved out again, and my brother died, then I started a whole new job.
My 20s were much more tumultuous in some ways, as they typically are. I think I burned through five or six different jobs before finishing school and becoming a teacher, and I moved five times in one year, and lived in ten different places within six years, including my first house, with almost thirty different people at different times. I'll be celebrating thirty years in the same house soon. It's twice as long as I've lived anywhere else. But this past ten years feels like it was full of much more impactful changes than any prior decade. It was a lot!
It's so curious looking back and feeling like the distance is the same between now and each milestone. I feel like that day all in pink could have been just last year. The years really flatten as they pass into singular moments that could have been at any time, in any order. It's an effort to sort out the order! I'm still ten when I'm on my bike on a trail and over 100 when my ankles crack as I walk down the stairs each morning.
My mum once told me she hadn't expected me to make it past 20. I took a lot of foolish risks. I was adventurous and wanted to experience all the things!! I was very lucky that hard drugs weren't as accessible at the time. Or filming everything for social media. I made it three times as long as mum predicted! I didn't think to take care of myself until I had my first kid and was struck by the reality of someone depending on me so fully. Now I drive the speed limit, and keep my smoke detectors operational, and wear a mask in public places. It's knowing we matter that provokes wanting to stick around as long as we can, even as our days are more clearly numbered.
Today, my kids are the only act, and they are such a joy to be with! My biggest challenge today will be staying awake past 10pm.
It's such a trope for some old geezer to say, "Where did everyone go?" Once kids come, they become the focus. I remember my parents having parties when I was very young, peering through the stair railing at all the shenanigans, but they gave up after a certain point and just lost touch with everyone beyond Christmas cards. I talk to lots of people regularly, but none enough that I'm driven to invite over, even if Covid didn't exist. I like to do what I want to do in my free time, and most of those activities are solitary or unusual. We pare down our lives to what really counts as the sun starts to set, and taking the time to get to know someone is a gamble that might take up too much precious time. I love people and learning about them, but it takes so long for us to share anything real about ourselves. Mixed with that is that normal socializing is so much work, and I still don't do it quite right, which makes it even more onerous. My face rarely matches what I'm feeling, and I'm even more set apart now as the only masker in any room. Without a few drinks, chatting sometimes feels like a chore I'm tolerating until I can get back to my book pile. I like the explanation of small talk as foreplay to warm someone up for deeper conversation, but foreplay is actually fun even when the main event doesn't happen.
Nate Bargatze has a bit about aging: in your 20s you're willing to go anywhere. In your 30s, you want more details: "Is it loud? I'm going to drive separate." But in your 40s, we decide, "I'm not going. I'm mad you thought I would go." I think in your 50s, once the kids are gone, there's a bit of a resurgence in socializing until it loses its importance again, and we decide on the few people and tasks that give us the most joy.
I got really used to being surrounded by kids at home and work. I think I'm best suited to being a child with grownups looking down their nose at me or openly pointing and laughing. I still just want to explore and discover things! I'm still in awe at the beauty of the world and the clever designs that make it all work. There's so much I don't know or understand. I still sing and dance as soon as music plays, even when nobody else joins in and it makes them uncomfortable or annoyed. Otherwise I'm forcefully restraining myself to appease them. I grieved a few years back when my youngest outgrew lying in moss with me and singing loudly in the car. Looking at the clouds through the trees has become a solo activity. It's not normal adult behaviour. But she'll still dance with me. C.S. Lewis said,
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
But who knows what the next ten years will bring! My mom made it to 69, and my dad met someone and married the following year. He was doing great well into his 90s. I could take after either one. I think we always have one foot in a hopeful openness to what the future might bring, and one foot in the possibility of loss. We have to be wary of grieving in advance, and the stoics remind us that death just means you no longer suffer any pain! I often struggle to imagine that many of us will be here much longer. The climate is seriously fucked. This next decade will likely be historical in all the worst ways - if anyone's left to write it all down.
I am such a blast at parties!
The fallen petals make a nice backdrop too. I still have surprisingly little grey, and I expect it'll come in all at once very soon and curly. They're coming in coiled like the springs in a pen! But so grateful to still be standing.
 |
| at 50 |
 |
| at 42 |
No comments:
Post a Comment