Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Now We Are Fifty

Long ago, when my son was a baby and we lived in Indianapolis, we went over to a friend's house on the summer day that was her daughter's fourth birthday. When we came up the walk the little girl was sitting on the porch steps, next to her cousin who lived down the street. I wished her happy birthday. She beamed, and her cousin slung his arm around her shoulders and said to me, solemnly, "Now we are both four."

I'm a few weeks older than my husband. Today is his birthday, and now we are both fifty.

I had a lovely birthday. My parents came to spend the weekend, and we were in our house in the North Carolina mountains, which I love, and I went to the farmer's market in Boone, which I love. That week I had lunch with some of my girlfriends and they gave me birthday cards that referenced leg hair and wine--I was among my people--and really, even the weather cooperated on my birthday.

I'm sorry to say that my husband is having a substantially worse day. For one thing, he's quite sick. He was feeling a little off on Sunday, then yesterday felt bad enough to stay home from work (this is a man who only missed two days of work when he ruptured his Achilles tendon). This morning he's still not wholly well but he got up early and heaved himself off to the office, where he's got a full day including surgery; we were going to go out to dinner but he's not sure he'll be up for it. Meanwhile his beloved wife, who was sleeping in the guest room to avoid contagion, accidentally set her alarm for PM instead of AM, consequently overslept and didn't see him off or wish him happy birthday in person, let alone make him breakfast or do anything nice for him.

Though I do have presents for later.

Anyway, we are fifty. I expected I'd feel older. Perhaps he does; I'll have to ask.

Fifty has a nice solid heft to it. A half century. A reasonable length of time. The world can change a lot in fifty years, and ours has, in mostly good ways, and for all that I love history I prefer living now. We've had a couple of sharp wake-up calls this year--my head trauma, some life-changing events in family and friends--and it's made us think hard, what do we really want to do with whatever time we have left? We both hope it's lots of time--I think living to be 100 sounds great--but of course that's not our call. Very little is our call, except how we chose to react to our situations, how we spend each small portion of our time. We were walking through Grant Park in Chicago on Saturday and my husband slipped his hand into mine, and I thought, I've been married 28 years to a man who still wants to hold my hand. 

Now we are both fifty. Let the second act begin.

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