A birthday today: I’m 49.
When you’re young you never think it’ll happen to you. Old people are other people. And while 49 is still youngish, by this age you begin to suspect you may in fact someday become 79, or even 89, and that being such a late-stage age might actually be something you’d consider good fortune.
By 49, you begin to put some things aside out of necessity. I used to go on backpacking trips, days spent walking in the woods and mountains carrying 30 pounds. Then my knees began to click and clack. A few years ago I traded a tent for a camper. The usual progression.
So you try new things to fill the newly empty spaces. In the past year I dallied with a brief membership at a bouldering gym (a foolish step up, if anything, from hiking). On my third visit I fell, and though I landed on a 3-foot thick foam mat, my back shouted, what a fool, to think you might turn back the clock, yet again, with some new adventure.
For sale: Climbing shoes, barely worn.
As hope for the longevity of your body dwindles, you turn to how best to preserve your mind. Do I recall having heard something about olive oil, or blueberries? In any case, maybe time to dial back the wine. Or… is blueberry wine a thing? Switch to martinis?
When you see yourself everyday in the mirror, the change can be so subtle you imagine that it might not be happening to you at all. But when I see pictures of other people who are 49 (or worse) — especially old friends, family or acquaintances I haven’t seen in a while — my first thought is usually, “That guy looks terrible for 49.” Having seen myself daily and so missed the changes, I’m just glad I don’t look like that.
The thing is, it’s only at first that it’s a slow creep. And then one day it’s the abruptness of it all, the acceleration of time; the compression of the past, and the expansion of the future that someday doesn’t include you.
49 made me glad for the sunshine today. For things like the leaves in the fall, still holding on tight in their bright new outfits until the day when the breeze brings them down and they grace the ground where feet like ours will delight in walking upon them as the moisture escapes their bodies and brittle underfoot they break, this lovely experience for the living.
Here’s a poem I wrote 10 years ago. I think today I’d just end it after “I was warming my hands”
On Getting Older But Not Wiser
I thought I saw Wisdom
At age 27,
A dim shadow in moonlight
Not helped by sunglasses.
At 28, I turned a corner
Saw him dancing with no music
A loser, a loner —
I walked on by and tossed him a quarter
30 came, and I entered a new place,
Little lines on my face, near my lips and eyes,
From smiling and crying and sometimes surprise.
But Wisdom is a brow furrow at best,
Easily misconstrued as confusion, a test.
At 33, I saw him (or her) on a walk
He fled down an alley, not willing to talk
But I didn’t get this far by being unclever
It’s not the same as Wisdom, but it’ll do as a leveler
I doubled back and trapped him against concrete and brick
But he had a knife, and I just a stick
He stabbed me three times with a flick of his wrist
And fled before I could ask “what’s the trick
To living a life of wonder and whim
And finding oneself, and all that schtick?”
At age 37, the bastard was quicker than ever
But I’d set a trap, and he took a header
Into a puddle of kerosene and gas
With a match strike I asked:
Did he have any last words, this Wisdom, for me?
But before he could say
I was warming my hands
Now 39, I feel bad I did it.
He might have said things that would’ve caused me to get it.
But Wisdom isn’t the only master
There’s still kindness, and courage, and justice and prudence.
There’s still 40, I hope, and a few more chances
To dance to a music that isn’t exactly a sound
So much as the ground and the sky all around.
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