Reflections on Almost Forty

come on sweetheart
let’s adore one another
before there is no more
of you and me – Rumi

This ain’t the same summer song that you used to know
‘Cause Jack left Diane thirty years ago
The world is spinning too fast for you and me – MKTO, American Dream

When I was seven years old, wearing no shoes and carrying a towel over my shoulder, I walked with my family down to our boat, The Mustard Seed, to watch the fireworks. We did it every year. It was one of the magical things about growing up in Vermont. Everyone would go out on their boats and we’d meet up with friends and tie the boats together. The kids would jump in the water while the adults chatted and had drinks as the sun went down. Then when the sun finally passed behind the mountains (late in the summer in Vermont), we’d sit back and watch the Burlington fireworks over the water. On the boat ride back to our neighborhood dock, I always fell asleep. That year, at seven, I was getting a little old for my dad to carry me back up to the house, but he still did. As usual, I woke up in my bed in the middle of the night and wondered momentarily how I got there. Then, remembering the boat ride and my parents tucking me into bed, I snuggled up next to my cat and fell back to sleep.

I feel the same way about turning forty this Saturday. How did I get here? My feet, bigger now, are still the same feet that padded barefoot down to the dock and my hands, wrinklier now, are still the same hands that reached out to pat my childhood cat. It seems impossible that thirty-three years have passed since that summer, and yet at the same time when I think about all that’s happened, of course I know how I got here.

“It’s just a number.” People keep saying that when I mention my birthday. Yes, it is just a number. But it’s a number that makes me think of other numbers. Like the number one. That’s the number of lives we get (unless, of course, it’s not, in which case please don’t let me come back in my next life as that scary spider that was in the girls’ bathtub the other day). Or the number eighty. That’s the life expectancy in Colorado. Which means that if I’m lucky, I’m probably about halfway through. It’s sobering.

Forty is also called midlife and of course we all have heard the term midlife crisis. I’m not having one. I’m okay with my wrinkling skin and if I get a new car this year it’ll be a newer version of our banged up minivan. But as I approach forty, I can’t help but thinking of all of the things that will never happen again. When I was younger, everything felt like it would last forever: riding around Lake Champlain on our boat, exploring islands and going out to lakeside dinners with my family and friends; lounging in my college dorm room, eating M&Ms and gossiping about the night before; hanging out at the park in Quito with Toby, talking about our future; drinking tea with friends when Eevee and Lucy were babies, when one afternoon could stretch out indefinitely. I didn’t think of those days as passing moments in time, but as days that would last forever.

Of course, even as those days are gone, great new experiences have replaced the old ones. My sister and I no longer dance in the basement to Michael Jackson records on our Fisher Price record player, but now I listen as my three girls belt out Bruno Mars songs that play on their iPads. I no longer gossip with my college friends about which boy I like, but instead I live with someone more wonderful than I could have imagined at the time. I no longer celebrate the fourth of July on The Mustard Seed, but this year we celebrated around a campfire, surrounded by mountains and pine trees, in Bogan Flats. And of course I still see my parents and sister, we just spend time together in Maryland, Rhode Island, North Carolina and Colorado instead of Vermont. (Or, this summer, in Ireland and France.) And we’ve added some great new kids and grown-ups to the mix.

I do miss Lake Champlain though. My sister and I spent most of our summer days skipping stones into the water and swimming out to the raft with our neighborhood friends. We would dive from the raft into the water to collect white rocks and clam shells and then pile them up on the raft to dry in the sun, while we lay on our bellies and dried in the sun as well. When I’m stressed, I still call to mind that feeling of the sun on my back and the gentle rocking of the waves under the raft.

And when I think of that, I guess I know what people mean when they say that forty is just a number. Moments of pure happiness seem to exist outside of numbers on calendars and clocks. As I marveled at the fireworks with my family when I was seven, I wasn’t thinking about what had happened yesterday or would happen tomorrow. I was simply and purely enjoying the moment. Perhaps the number forty is just a reminder to appreciate my days and the people in them.