Lordy, Lordy Look Who's Forty

In February I turned forty.

When I was a kid, it was a common occurrence to peruse the local newspaper and find a picture of a person looking young and vibrant and from the 70’s with the caption, “Lordy, Lordy, look who’s 40.” It was always exciting to see someone I knew and try to make sense of how the person I knew to be forty was once twenty.

In the 90’s, Hallmark had an entire section of “over the hill” mementos. Teenage me never really knew what “over the hill” meant but seeing as the color black was distinctly associated with the phrase, I knew it couldn’t be good. I would often wonder what this “hill” was and what it meant to go over it and why it seemed like such a bad thing. Afterall, isn’t going downhill easier than going up?

I remember hearing about men going through a mid-life crisis or a woman wanting plastic surgery. I can recall on any given day seeing a commercial for whatever magical cream or machine or tool being sold for four easy installments of $19.99 was meant to keep you looking young. Why were people in the 90’s so obsessed with trying not to be old?

While turning forty has not been terrifying for me, I will admit there have been a few jarring situations I was not quite ready for. I was initially very shocked to find a flyer in the mail telling me I’m now old enough to need a mammogram. And seeing high school friends with teenagers is always surreal to me. My core memories of these people were when we were the same age as their kids are now. And the one that hits me the hardest is having coworkers who sometimes tell me I’m old enough to be their mom. They have no memory of 9/11, the death of Princess Diana, and they don’t even know the name Chris Farley. But even after all of that, I’m still not terrified of getting older.

My birthday this year was perfect.

I celebrated with coworkers both past and present. My celebration with friends was so fun we are still making jokes about it in the group chat nearly seven months later. And of course, I celebrated with my family.

My family party was perfectly executed as per my usual requests and rituals. We gathered at my parent’s house and ate my favorite meal, Tuna Noodle Casserole. No one likes it except for me and my grandma so all the others ate lasagna. After the meal, we gathered around a white cake with chocolate icing and the exact number of candles to represent my age. We took a picture of me with my nieces and nephews and the lighting of all forty candles began. My mom was adamant this was going to be the last year we were lighting this many candles because she “isn’t buying three boxes of candles next year” and “this is getting ridiculous.” (Although to be fair, she says that every year). After the obligatory singing of the happy birthday song, I made my wish and blew out the candles sending smoke billowing through the kitchen. Jokes were made, the cake was cut, and the only item left on the agenda was for my mom to tell the story of the day I was born. It’s been told so many times now that everyone in attendance can recite pieces of it by heart. I don’t remember exactly when or why this tradition came to be, but it has become my favorite.

This year my gift from my mom was a photo album with a page dedicated to each year of my life. While not every page contains a picture from the day of my birthday, nearly ¾’s of them shows me sitting in front of a white cake with chocolate icing and one candle for each year of my life. Every page is filled with 39 years of grandparents and cousins and friends and nieces and nephews. And the last page was left appropriately blank to add a picture from the big 40…Lordy, Lordy.

Author John Green once said, “One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can’t ever quite get rid of.” That night when I got home, I reflected on forty years of my past selves and wondered what I might say to some of them if given the chance.

To ten-year-old me: I would warn you that within weeks of your birthday, mom is going to drop a bomb on you. She is going to tell you that she is pregnant, and you are going to hate it. You’ll cry a lot (and mom will too). She is going to sign you up for a Big Sibling class to help make the transition from youngest child to middle child a little easier. You’ll be the oldest in the class and it won’t make you feel better. But when the baby brother you thought you never wanted finally arrives, you will be so proud. And when you get on the school bus the next day and excitedly tell the driver your new brother’s name and weight, she will ask "how long?" You’ll be confused and say, “just a few hours, I think.” But just know that’s not what she meant. And this brother will grow up to be one of your favorite people and dare I say, friend. You will adore his children. They will boss you around. You will play all their games and give them every back rub they demand and always change the channel to what they want to watch on TV because you don’t know how to tell them no. You will love it.

To 11-year-old me: Your big sister will move away to college, and you’ll not be okay with this. You’ll spend the weeks leading up to her moving out doing some really mean things to her like taking a thumbtack to her makeup compact and tangling all her necklaces. Your mom will secretly tell her she has to let you ride in the car with her on the day she moves. You’ll start out strong but will burst into tears within minutes of pulling out of the driveway when the song Wind Beneath My Wings comes on the radio. Through your sobs and tears you will tell her you don’t want her to go. She’ll eventually forgive you for all the mean stuff you did but everyone will remind you of these stories for years to come. You’ll hate that she doesn’t live with you anymore, but she will never really stop taking care of you. She’ll make you no bake cookies for the rest of your life because they are your favorite and she’ll even attempt to teach you to make them once. It will not go well. It will end in an argument. You will be adamant she sabotaged you on purpose because she doesn’t want anyone to make cookies as good as hers. She will defend herself by saying you just don’t know the difference between butter and margarine. This argument will continue for years to come. You will never learn how to make no bake cookies partly because you will never remember if the recipe calls for butter or margarine but mostly because you just like how it makes you feel when she makes them for you.

To 12-year-old me: One night you’ll watch the move Hook starring Robin Williams. You’ll listen to Tinkerbell explain how in order to fly you have to think happy thoughts. You’ll spend one very sleepless night fearing you don’t have thoughts happy enough to make you fly. When you get older, you’ll know that your hormones and anxiety were the root of such silly thoughts and by the time you are forty, you’ll have created moments so beautiful and exhilarating that you’ll wonder how you could be so lucky. You’ll go dancing in a nightclub with strangers in London and toast the future with flutes of Champagne. Your heart will find peace on a rainy day in the Highlands of Scotland. You’ll watch sunsets on oceans and see two of the seven wonders of the world. You’ll find adventures in mountain ranges and live out all of your small town girl fantasies in big cities. You’ll take your parents out to eat every time you get a promotion at work. You’ll hold your baby nieces and nephews and someday hold their babies too. You’ll have friends you love and who love you for you. You will create a life you are proud of.

To teenage me: I’m uneasy talking to you the most. You’ll make a lot of mistakes. You’ll do a lot of dumb things. You’ll think these are the best years of your life, but you’ll learn those years don’t come until much later. You’ll spend a lifetime learning to forgive yourself for all the wrongs you committed. You’ll someday learn about brain development and how it doesn’t hit full maturity until your mid-twenties. You’ll blame every idiotic teenage thing you’ve done on this fact. You’ll learn that no one wants to be judged for who they were when they were 16 and collectively as a generation, we’ll all just accept that being a teenager was hard, especially at the turn of the millennium. So just do your best. You make it through it. Also, Y2K will be a very big deal for like six months and then you’ll never talk about it again. Oh, and your beanie babies are not worth any money.

To 21-year-old me: You’re in college and you’ll wake your roommate up in the middle of the night because of an existential crisis. You’ll tell her that you can’t save the world, and this will really bother you. You’ll tell her that you have these aspirations to help people but that you know that in the end you won’t be able to save everyone. This will carry over into your late 20’s and 30’s but by then you’ll learn that giving people the tools to save themselves is far more rewarding and more important. You’ll become a therapist, an advocate, an ally, a leader, and a defender of equality. Your boss will tell you about your righteous indignation and teach you to harness it in a way that is productive. You won’t love your job every day because it is hard and exhausting. But you will love fighting back against systems that suppress the vulnerable.

To 34-year-old me: On July 3rd, 2017 your boss will tell you to leave the office early to celebrate the holiday. You won’t and this seemingly innocuous decision will lead to the single most terrifying moment of your life when you collide head on with a truck that is in the wrong place at the wrong time. You will spend months and even years seeking out the meaning of this event but eventually you will decide that sometimes an accident is just that, an accident. You will learn that you are tougher than you ever imagined yourself to be both mentally and physically. It will take a long time to recover. The feelings will be with you every day of your life, sometimes sitting just below the surface and other times buried so deep you forget they are there. For at least a year you will not be yourself. You will think you are doing better but then another year will pass, and you will realize you are even better than the year before. Because of your injuries you will not bend the same as you did before. You will now take a little extra time getting off the floor. It’ll be a few years before you can walk a couple of miles again. You will start to appreciate the small things in life a little more than you did before. You’ll forget this sentiment at times, but it will come back to you at moments when you least expect it like when you enjoy a cold beverage on a hot summer evening sitting on your deck listening to the hum of the cicadas in the distance or watch the snowfall from the warmth of the couch in the house you have made a home. You will heal. You will grow. You will make it “over the hill.”

About the photo: Taken this summer in Paris, France in front of The Louvre. I do not love Paris, but I do love The Louvre. It's iconic and so is this picture.