Hello from the Top of the Hill
Some belated late night thoughts on turning 40 that I almost abandoned to my draft folder.
The day I learned about milestone birthdays was the day I showed up to school and my second grade classroom was fit for either a funeral or a haunted house. Black crepe paper strung from the ceiling. A vase of dead roses on the desk. Black balloons everywhere, crowned with the centerpiece: huge silver mylar proclaiming Over the Hill.
I don’t know who the prankster elves were or when they’d sneaked into Mrs. Law’s classroom. I had no idea what “over the hill” meant. But we were all grins and giggles that day, because somebody thought dead roses were funny, and whatever she was feeling about it, she laughed and smiled and kindly thanked us for our happy birthday wishes, as if we had anything to do with it.
Mrs. Law didn’t seem old then. I mean, she did in the way all adults do when you’re seven and don’t know your teachers have a life outside of your tiny classroom, that they don’t vanish into the ether until you show up again. In my family, adults didn’t make a big deal about their own ages. Parents and teachers all existed in a sort of eternally frozen grown-up-ness.
And here I am, old enough to vividly remember when the grownups were my age.
Two Saturdays ago, I turned 40, slowly and surely and so expected like another 5am midsummer sunrise. July 15 was a hot, calm, fairly uneventful day. I checked the boxes of my humble favorite summer things — visiting a new part of Rhode Island, a walk on the beach, coffee Oreo ice cream for lunch (yolo), a couple of free iced coffees, and a wander around Barnes and Noble with Chris. After months of putting so much emotional weight on this day, it came and went, as all birthdays do. There was no magic switch inside, no sudden new aches and pains. Just the slow, plodding, dailiness of getting older.
I wonder sometimes about our capacity for living endings well, for really holding the time in our hands and taking a moment to celebrate before gently letting it go. Sometimes, I think I’m pretty good at this, like when I woke up on my wedding day and took extra time to snuggle the family cats before I walking out the door into my new life.1 Or a few years later when we moved out of our tiny first apartment and I paused to lay on the empty floor and say thanks.
Other times, I suppose I am ready to get on with the next thing. Turning 20 felt like becoming an official adult. Turning 30 was exciting, bound up with an incoming move and marriage. Turning 40 feels like, well… regular, everyday shifts.
Still, I’ve wanted to hold onto the days this past year. I’ve wanted to make notes of the last movie I saw2 or the last album I loved or the last iced coffee I drank in my 30s, those tiny, tiny details that make a life. In the months before my birthday, I start trying out the new number — not 39, but almost 40. I take a little melatonin gummy when sleep isn’t working, limit my alcohol to one or two low ABV beers a week,3 and wonder if I’m feeling the first little twinge of knee pain.
But also… I start up a new exercise routine, rediscover how good salads taste, make colorfully messy acrylic paintings for nobody but me, and buy some bright blue second hand roller skates with my birthday money. I’ve heard you have less f*s to give as you get older, that you return to the joys of your younger days and care a whole lot less what people think.
I hope against hope that it’s true. That my desire for a summer of joy isn’t a one-time fluke, but a renewed way of being in the world. I hope instead of plunging headlong over a hill, I can imagine that these are the days of emerging into who I was always meant to be.
***
A couple years ago, I saw an Instagram post from
about her own birthday tradition — an annual full-light, makeup-free selfie. As a chronic camera avoider, I thought, well, that sounds like a good idea I wish I’d known about sooner. So I took one last year. And another this year.And so this, friends, is 40. I can see where my bout with covid and stress thinned my hairline a little, and where maybe, just maybe, my current skincare approach is working for me. (One thing I don’t miss about my 20s? So. Much. Acne.)
I don’t know what this decade will bring. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine too far ahead in these early, murky years of midlife. I just know I want to play more, to savor the days, to be attentive and look up from my phone more than I look down, to laugh easily and try to keep my knees in good working order.4
I think back to when I was in my 20s, fresh out of college, and most of my friends were in their 40s, and how life-giving they were to me, that they would spend time with a fresh-outta-college kid who thought she knew more than she did while also feeling wildly insecure. How they called out my gifts and assured me I was seen and loved and wanted. All I want now is to to be that semi-cool 40-something friend to others.
I want to see that yes, in a way it’s an end — of youth or even some dreams — but in so many more ways, it’s a beginning too. And endings and beginnings are beautiful things, with a whole lot of life in the middle.
🖊️ Writing Elsewhere
Recently I brushed up on my rusty music reviewing skills and wrote a little piece on Skye Peterson’s debut album Where the Winter Was. It’s up on The Rabbit Room this week! If you dig acoustic singer-songwritery folk, this might be right up your alley. You can read it and listen to the album here.
My dog rocks and I love her. Also I am a cat lady in my soul.
Mission Impossible 7, a solid summer movie choice tbh. Although the fact that 61-year-old Thomas Cruise Mapother IV drove a motorbike off a literal cliff over and over for his art, and I hobbled out of the theater because my quads hurt so bad from doing too many squats… that stings.
Side note: the first movie I saw as a 40-year-old was Barbie and I WAS NOT READY FOR THOSE FEELS.
A small note of appreciation that not-drinking and fun mocktails are suddenly cool. What a time to be alive!
Did I buy pads with my new skates? 1000%.