A blogger grapples with forty

It is a largely nondescript Saturday evening.  A group of people have gathered in a restaurant.  There are candles on a cake.  Presents on a table.

There are forty-two or forty-three people in all.  I would count them later.  Why were they all here?  It must be bingo night.  Or they must be having a raffle or something, giving away cash.

No, they are here for me.  Some by choice, some because they're family -- they're required to love me.  There are aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, even a former co-worker and her husband.

I am caught off guard.  When my sister asked me out to dinner, I had been suspicious at first.  But by the time we arrived at the restaurant, I had forgotten to be.

There is a face cake, with me as a kid of probably seven or eight, with my Bo Duke hair, wearing a football jersey, shoulder pads, football pants, full uniform.  Funny thing, I never actually played football on a team or anything.  But still, a face cake!

My Mom was nice enough to bring an essay I wrote in grade school, "The Person I Admire The Most."  The person I chose to write about?  Axl.  He is at the party, and he is LOVING this.

"Come on, we were in the fourth grade!" I really thought we were.
"Bone, we were in seventh grade."
"What?  So I wrote this when I was like thirteen?"
"Yep."
"Oh... well... that is a bit more embarrassing."

He will milk the essay for every last drop.  I wouldn't expect anything less.  That's not to mention all the "You write like a girl" comments the essay drew. 

Elsewhere, Nephew Bone is proudly displaying Uncle Bone's age with his fingers. (Is this really the sort of thing we want to be teaching our children?)  Or attempting to anyway.  More times than not he winds up holding up four fingers on each hand.

There are the requisite gag gifts.  At least, I hope they are gag gifts -- Polident, chocolate laxative, and a Viagra bottle filled with M&M's.  At least, I hope they were M&M's.

It strikes me more than once during the evening that the next time this many people show up for me will be at my funeral.  Or wedding.  Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. (What? Either way, I'll most likely be in a suit and people will be crying.)

There is an ease to the evening.  A comfortableness.  But still, there is an underlying feeling I can't seem to escape.  A feeling of "I can't believe this is me."

And yet, it is.

I still feel twenty-five most of the time, save for maybe Friday evenings when a week of work and waking up at 5:30 has caught up with me and I fall asleep on the couch by 8 PM.  And yet, these candles on the cake betray me.

For...... ty.

There, I said it.  I admit it's been a little tough for me.  And yes, I know that if I live long enough, someday forty will seem oh so young.  I guess I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do now, how I'm supposed to handle it.  Do I just pretend to take it all in stride, when suddenly life doesn't seem quite as long as it used to seem?

Am I not supposed to say that?  Is it taboo?   It's sure easier not to think about it, if only for sanity's sake.  So much more convenient to put it out of mind.

And yet, we mark the passing of these years with, of all things, candles.  Has ever there been a thing more symbolic of the life's impermanence than one of these?  Coming to life, burning to its peak of brightness, flickering for a little while, and then gone, all in a matter of moments.  (I don't know about you, but I think this is shaping up to be one of my funniest posts ever!)

I read a quote recently that I would butcher badly if I tried to paraphrase.  But the gist was that life is made up of a million instants.  There is this instant, and that instant, and as soon as they are here they are gone, a part of our past.

So there is right now, then there all the days of our past and all the days of our future.  And I suppose I have always tended to yearn for the larger of those.  When I was young, I longed to be older.  And now that I am older...

People have been saying all the usual things to try and be helpful/keep me from losing it:  "Life begins at forty."  "Forty is the new thirty."  Or even better, "Forty is the new twenty-five."  "You're just a baby."  (I gotta admit, it was refreshing hearing that from someone other than a current or ex-girlfriend.)   "You're not really forty,  you're eighteen with twenty-two years experience."  And my personal favorite, "Studies have shown that people who have the most birthdays, live the longest."

Still, it's just weird for me to think about not being here someday.  Me!  Bone!  I mean, take a moment and try and picture each of your lives with no Bone in it....

Not a few seconds, a moment...

Not a pretty sight, is it?  Didn't think so.  Here, have one of these odd-shaped blue M&M's.  They've sure been making me feel better.

I'll close with a photo.  My aunt who snowbirds in Florida sent me a birthday card.  Inside, she had included the newspaper clipping of my first birthday.

(My God, was I adorable!  I could have been the Gerber baby!   Kinda makes you wonder what in the world happened.)

She wrote, "I came across this handsome little boy.  Thought you'd like to keep it as I have all these birthdays.  Lots of love..."

Wow.

It brought me to a complete stop.

Out of life's million little "instants," only a cherished few are able to do that.

"Guess my life's moved / At near light speed / Since I started this wild and crazy run / Such a long way / From that first birthday..."

...and holding

The passing of another year in one's life is met with a variety of feelings and reactions, often largely dependent on what particular year it happens to be.  Well, this particular year happened to be the big one for me.

No, not that big one.  That's next year.  But as I can't promise I won't be under 24-hour psychiatric care by then...

Now if you think I'm going to sit here and ramble on about getting old or the blinding speed of the passing of time, and that I'm gonna be all pensive and self-wallowing, well then, I must say, you know me quite well.  Frighteningly well, as a matter of fact.  It's actually making me a bit uncomfortable.  Stop it.

Thirty-nine arrived this past weekend.  And I turned and ran like a little girl. I'm so not ready for this.

When I think of thirty-nine, I think of a guy with a beer belly who's out of shape and helps coach his kid's little league team, but really has no clue what he's doing, and besides, his kid isn't even interested in baseball and would rather be in band but he continues forcing him into sports.  No one in particular, just a general guy.

It just sounds so... grown-up.  So... not me.  And yet, it is me.  There's nothing I can do about it.  I mean, if Ponce de Leon couldn't find the Fountain of Youth, what chance do I have?  Although with GPS technology being what it is these days... Hmm.

Anyway, I celebrated -- or more aptly, commemorated -- the occasion by having dinner in Nashville on Saturday night with friends.  We ate at a Mexican restaurant called Tito's.  Then I closed out the evening by singing their baby girl to sleep.  My friends', not the restaurant owners'.

Sunday was spent with family, a blessing I treasure more and more as the years continue to pass.  It nearly freaks me out every time we're out to eat and Mom orders off the senior menu.  My Mom!?  In my mind, she should still be forty.

How did this happen?  Where did my thirties go?  For that matter, where did my twenties go?  And are they now in the same place comparing notes and saying things to each other like, "Really?  He did the exact same thing when he was with me."

I know all the platitudes.  Life begins at, er, after thirty-nine.  Thirty-nine is the new twenty-nine, or whatever.   But I, for one, happened to like the old twenty-nine just fine.  In fact, I've made a unilateral decision:  I will not be having any more birthdays.

Allow me to clarify.  I'll still be accepting presents, I'll just no longer be counting years.

And heaven help the person who dares put an ad in the paper next year with a photo of Baby Bone that says "Lordy Lordy, Bone is..."  Well, you know.

Anyway, I thank you for allowing me to freak out a bit as I prepare to approach that age which shall forever remain unspoken.  Thus begins my attempt to ward off a crisis of the mid-life variety which, by some acounts, may have already begun.  That should make for some fun blog posts in the coming year, wouldn't you say?

I figure at best, I'll continue to age gracefully and achieve my goal of being the youngest 39-year-old you know.  At worst, I'll go kicking and screaming every step of the way, torturing myself daily with the question of what have I done with my life, and maybe wind up with my own Scott-Baio-Is-45-&-Single-esque reality show.  Or at least, some good meds. 

Either way, I realize that someday we'll look back on this -- yes, even this -- with wistful heart and older eyes.

"She said, you're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life.  And they didn't, so he died..."

More to love

What did you do this summer?  Travel?  Swim?  Tan?  Work?  Post four thousand Facebook statuses?  Nothing?

Well, that's all better than what I did. 

I, Bone, gained weight.  Between the months of April and September, I packed on not nine, not ten, but ELEVEN pounds.  Thus putting me at the heaviest weight of my life.  Which would be great if I were a boxer and trying to move up a weight class, but I'm not.  I thought briefly about boxing when I was younger, but I have a fear of getting punched.  So I stuck to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out on the Nintendo.  Don Flamenco, Bald Bull, Soda Popinski -- those were more my speed.  But anyway, I'm getting off track here.

Thus was the summer of my stomach's great content.  I did not exercise much.  Well, I played lots of Word Mole and online Scrabble, but apparently mental exercise doesn't count so much when it comes to weightier matters.  All the while imbibing carbonated beverages like they were about to make them available by prescription only.  What did I expect?

My abs have gone from not-quite-six-pack to she's-just-starting-to-show.  The taut pre-teen Swedish boy body is no more.

So where do I go from here?  I mean, Richard Simmons is not walking through my door.  Believe me, I've tried.  I've written him like three times.

It wasn't at all a surprise to me that I had gained weight over the summer.  I knew.  I was dreading and putting off stepping on the scales.  What has been a surprise, however, is how immensely difficult the pounds have been to shed.

I started eating (slightly) better and running (a lot) more.  I've been doing that for three or four weeks now.  Grand total weight loss in that time?  Three pounds.  Double-you-tee-eff?  Has gravity increased or something in the last few years?  They really should do some research on that.

I'm starting to think this may be the hardest thing I've ever done.  I'm not even kidding.  To understand that, you must understand something about me: I tend to shy away from anything that appears even slightly difficult. 

Oh, also, for years, I lived in a carefree world where things like calories and the future were something for other people to worry about.  I had a metabolism somewhere between an Olympic swimmer and a hummingbird.  As long as I ran two or three times a week, I could pretty much eat anything I wanted.  And indeed, I did.

But now it appears that era of my life has come to a close.  My hummingbird days are over.

Let us mourn the death of my metabolism.

"My next thirty years, I'm gonna watch my weight.  Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late..."