On Turning Fifty

The years mean so much less as we age. The difference between turning ten and turning twenty was profound. I was basically not the same person with a completely different set of friends and acquaintances and had moved from PA to NJ to CT to VT to CA and back to CT. Turning ten, I was a little tan kid in fourth grade in an LA suburb, mostly concerned with BB guns and minibikes. Turning twenty, I was a sophomore at an ivy covered college in Connecticut, lost in a rapturous, heart bending affair of the heart of some sort and bearing absolutely no resemblance to that LA kid.

Flash forward and I’m turning fifty on the same street where I turned forty, living in the same house and with many of the same guests showing up. Same job (none), same wife (and best friend), a little less hair and memory and both grayer at that.

The odd juxtaposition of how quickly it passes and how little things change is sort of paradoxical in an obvious yet unfathomable way. What a ride. I’m so thankful for all the people in my life who have made it a joy, and I hope I get to see them at sixty. The idea that I’m closer to being eighty than nineteen is profoundly disturbing, but I remember friends who didn’t get to grow old, and this seems the better alternative. Geoff Dimmick, Brick Fisher, John Sidgmore, Dave Boast and a host of others would surely rather age than be lost so young.

Happy Birthday to the whole world. No exceptions.