Let's Just Mark The Big Ones, Okay?
It occurred to me that I have in some way, shape, or form documented my 35th birthday and 40th birthday on LJ so it only seemed fitting to write something about #45, which is today. I've said many times that one of the perks of keeping this active is that I get to occasionally revisit where I was over a pretty wide span of time.
It is very striking how different the three five year markers are. I spent my 35th birthday in Seattle with my former wife and our two kids and I very much remember being both incredibly happy but also very restless. I had lost a lot of weight and had never been so willing to be photographed. As such I still have great pictures of myself and my sons at the Space Needle and at the Experience Music Project (now the Pop Culture Museum). This was 2008, still a few years before my marriage hit the rocks, and I have to give props to Kelly for making the birthday trip to Seattle really good. She planned things very well (always did) and we crammed a lot into two days. I spent the night of my 35th eating a salmon feast on an island about 45 minutes from the Emerald City via ferry. That was pretty damn cool.
The contrast from 35 to 40 is stunning. I spent my 40th birthday freshly divorced and dating a really nice woman named Karen (we're still friends) who took me out to dinner at a great Indian place and, given that we had only been out twice before, decided to make that the evening to sleep with me. It was very carefree, no strings, no discussion of a future, and in the extended celebrations that followed over the next few days I did a storytelling show -- only the 2nd one where I'd been an invited storyteller -- that turned out to be the one and only time my father ever saw me perform. He thought the whole scene was so strange but he made the best of it, buying my invited friends a round of drinks and watching me find my way in a life reinvented. I went home that night with a friend and found myself the next morning racing to meet my visiting parents for breakfast, my hair fucked up, still in last night's clothes, and opting to be 15 minutes late to the Cheesecake Factory so I could at least got to H&M and buy a new t-shirt so it wouldn't be so obvious. It was like a walk of shame meets brunch in the suburbs.
And so today it is 45 and like 44, 43, and basically everything post-39 I laugh at just how damn old I used to think being this age would be. When you're a kid someone over 40 seems ancient. In your 20's it feels so far away. A part of me would like to feel the big 5-0 is still pretty far off but the time between 40 and today has felt incredibly short. And yet just like 35 to 40 so much has changed. I have a true partner (Allison). I have two adult children (!). I have a dog! Swear help me...if I am not a grandparent BEFORE age 50 I will consider that a win. (Bailey will be 22 this November and is in a long-term relationship.)
So, alas, 45... too old to decide I secretly want to play in the NHL but still young enough to become a better ice skater if I want to.
Or something.
It is very striking how different the three five year markers are. I spent my 35th birthday in Seattle with my former wife and our two kids and I very much remember being both incredibly happy but also very restless. I had lost a lot of weight and had never been so willing to be photographed. As such I still have great pictures of myself and my sons at the Space Needle and at the Experience Music Project (now the Pop Culture Museum). This was 2008, still a few years before my marriage hit the rocks, and I have to give props to Kelly for making the birthday trip to Seattle really good. She planned things very well (always did) and we crammed a lot into two days. I spent the night of my 35th eating a salmon feast on an island about 45 minutes from the Emerald City via ferry. That was pretty damn cool.
The contrast from 35 to 40 is stunning. I spent my 40th birthday freshly divorced and dating a really nice woman named Karen (we're still friends) who took me out to dinner at a great Indian place and, given that we had only been out twice before, decided to make that the evening to sleep with me. It was very carefree, no strings, no discussion of a future, and in the extended celebrations that followed over the next few days I did a storytelling show -- only the 2nd one where I'd been an invited storyteller -- that turned out to be the one and only time my father ever saw me perform. He thought the whole scene was so strange but he made the best of it, buying my invited friends a round of drinks and watching me find my way in a life reinvented. I went home that night with a friend and found myself the next morning racing to meet my visiting parents for breakfast, my hair fucked up, still in last night's clothes, and opting to be 15 minutes late to the Cheesecake Factory so I could at least got to H&M and buy a new t-shirt so it wouldn't be so obvious. It was like a walk of shame meets brunch in the suburbs.
And so today it is 45 and like 44, 43, and basically everything post-39 I laugh at just how damn old I used to think being this age would be. When you're a kid someone over 40 seems ancient. In your 20's it feels so far away. A part of me would like to feel the big 5-0 is still pretty far off but the time between 40 and today has felt incredibly short. And yet just like 35 to 40 so much has changed. I have a true partner (Allison). I have two adult children (!). I have a dog! Swear help me...if I am not a grandparent BEFORE age 50 I will consider that a win. (Bailey will be 22 this November and is in a long-term relationship.)
So, alas, 45... too old to decide I secretly want to play in the NHL but still young enough to become a better ice skater if I want to.
Or something.