Tomorrow I turn 55, and I kind of love this age and all it represents. This birthday reminds me of my old restaurant days when I waited tables in the outdoors with a wild cast of characters. Phyllis, the ever-blonde, full-smoke owner, drank Merlot until it lined her lips red on the night of her 55th.
It was Bastille day, and many of us were working under an old beech tree while Dave played the electric piano, and coastal mafia-wannabes angled for free martinis and white wine. There were paper lanterns and little lights slung in the trees, and the crushed rock that covered the ground was pushed into pathways to let occasional flood waters drain from under customers’ tables to the neighboring hardware store. But tonight was dry, and my boss pretty much shouted to everyone who walked in, “I’m hitting the speed limit. Look out!” She laughed hard, and all the other old people did too. They understood.
I’m not sure I fully understood then, but I am getting closer. I’ve been going a million miles an hour for a long time now. Pretty much flying since I turned 30 when I finally figured out that it’s what you DO that matters, not what you think, believe, or even fancy yourself to be. So, I’ve been writing, making stuff and systems and businesses, charities and nfts, and ideas and philosophies too. Why not? It’s what humans do.
Then, at 40, I started ‘making’ kids, which marked the end of many solo adventures and the start of untidy new ones. Still, even with these marvelous little people in tow, I managed to go too fast. And I now realize that life’s speed limit is something that I should view with acceptance. It’s time. I shouldn’t even drive as fast as 55, in any way, let alone 65 – the new metaphoric expectation.
Maybe I simply can’t go fast anymore. Fast is what got stuff done, sure, but fast is also what makes me miss important signs along the way. Like fake friends and charming vampires. Smiling ghouls who tear-up all sweet and ingratiating, while they use my doing-ness to make things happen for them. You hope they pay at least pay it forward, instead of giving back cruelty, revisionist history, and their duct-taped adherence to their own self-importance. But I digress…
Friends are really where it’s at, and going fast means maybe missing the real ones and falling for some fake-y flash instead. Want a Facebook glitter party in buzzy place? I don’t. I want real people and genuine grownups around me. Authentic, vulnerable, raw and wild. Honest. It takes a long time to get here, and this is the only thing that will help you make it to old age awake, but it’s still uncommon.
The culture wants us to be hungry ghosts, training us to tell stories to soothe ourselves, and to buy things to own happiness, but never to be completely ALIVE. Fully awake and paying attention. It can be brutal.
Sometimes a tragedy gets you there. And, even though you want to die from the stress, you realize just how precious each second is, and you stop to take it all in again.
Many years ago, when my husband and son were thrown off a car while standing in front of a fish & chips joint, my world turned upside down. I lived on adrenaline for weeks on end. That day, I walked for miles on a New Hampshire road in flip flops to a mysterious scene. There were no Ubers, no help. We made our way to the start of a fate of helping and holding up others. Or so it seems. On a curvy road, with no sidewalk and company of a 10 year old carrying a stuffed animal for her brother. Our readiness began building for what we’d need to handle ahead.
To follow was a year of surgeries, head injuries, lost work, and long recoveries. Paperwork and ‘waiting on.’ No space for anything but The. Next. Thing. And that’s when I discovered what mattered. In the wild of life, people who matter just show up. They smell the need, or maybe they just look? Maybe a birdie tells them. Much of the town showed up for us, and many new friends too. They understood what was needed, and they did it. They texted, said full-bodied hellos, sent toys for my kids, or left plum cake and coffees on our front stoop. They were there, and that was that. Thank goodness for them, because after this care-giving crisis, there were many more to follow.
When I move fast, I tend to believe that doing and accomplishment matter most, but when I was young, I thought it was being good. Now I know it is neither. It is being a full-fledged human. A mess. A miracle. A creative being in the wilderness of life who just knows where to show up and does what needs doing, and who knows when to leave too. The winds often blow sideways, and trees near the edges shift sideways too, then grow up again. That’s us.
As I turn 55, I’ll be slowing down, and hell, I may just get out of the car altogether. I remember doing this one day in Arizona when I was 33. It was on a trip alone through the desert in a convertible with Joni Mitchell Blue and ‘Freeman in Paris.’ I had a sudden compulsion to stop the car, climb a tiny nearby mesa, and lie there making imaginary love with the air and sky. So I stopped, and did just that. Breathing, seeing, being. That communion still carries me, and speaks to me when I need the wind to tell me what to do. It always says nature, wilderness, risk and love. You be you.
I’m really glad I stopped that car. I’m really glad I’m alive. HBD.