Turning 40

In a few weeks I’ll be turning 40. Currently it doesn’t feel much different than previous markers, though I’m busy drifting through the end-of-school haze right now, where I don’t know if it’s May 8th or 28th, where I’m closing in on reading my 1,200th piece of student writing for the year, which equates to about 4,000 word-processed pages. We finish up May 30th, so I’ll have a few days to recoup and contemplate things, before the big day arrives. 

I can remember turning 25: I had just finished my first year teaching in Chicago, and I believe I rode my bike, though I could have taken the train, to the near-north environs of downtown, to a small French place, not a chic one but still putting in the work, and the tall exterior windows facing the sidewalk and street were open, and it was during the somnolent hours, say 3:30ish in the afternoon, so I had the place mostly to myself.

Not only had I finished my first year teaching but also my first year being in the city and away from home — Home, that is. I remember thinking, sitting in that bistro, living in the city, a French-ish cafe, the late afternoon, that I had made it. What more could I possibly want?

For my 30th birthday we went out to South Dakota, the Black Hills, to camp and hike. Harney Peak at the time, now known as Black Elk. One of my favorite spots, and my third time hiking it. Though on this visit we took a different route, a back one, that was significantly farther and more difficult than the previous. There were moments I wasn’t sure we would make it. We did, though, eventually, thighs and calves burning, feet blistered and sore. But then the post-hike swim in Sylvan Lake felt as sweet and refreshing as any I can recall.

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When I turned 35 I remember taking a picture and posting it, feeling quite proud and self-assured. A friend told me it is all over, physically speaking, when you turn 35, that it’s all downhill from there. 

And now 40. There are those who say I’m just a baby, still so young. Relatively speaking, that might be true, though for me it’s the oldest I’ve ever been. Now I have to be ever-vigilant about ear and nose hair, to take stretching seriously, say, before a parent-child soccer game or doubles pickleball. 

If you allowed me to say something for myself, then I’d say I’m self-motivated, though it certainly wouldn’t be for scheming or making more money. Whenever I get excited about something new there’s a good chance it will end up costing significantly more than it’ll ever make.

For this coming summer I’ve already mapped out my reading and writing projects; I’ll work on painting, oils and watercolors, and daily French practice. I’ve long been enamored with the idea of learning to sail, which I’ve read is one of the costliest and most useless hobbies you could take up, even outdistancing golf. Eventually I want to take up piano. 

It joys me to no end to have more than enough books to last a lifetime of reading, and yet I’ll still buy more. I’m within a few hours’ drive of the Great Lakes, one of the great freshwater lakes systems in the world, where I’ll dive in for a swim later this summer, a custom that cleanses me to the core and carries me over to the next year’s plunge. 

Philosophically, I feel myself moving toward uncertainty, toward “it depends,” toward the beauty of not knowing. And yet I’m also drifting toward ritual, toward weekly routines, Friday evenings, Sunday hikes, writing and more writing, finding the right word. I have some great good friends in my life and I’ve reconnected with an old one. I feel so full I could burst, and yet I have so much more to do. I have stories to write, essays to muddle through. Thoreau says, “In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.”

To toeing that line, at whatever age. 

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