New Times, published January 4, 1995
In my dream I am nine years old. We are playing dodge ball during PE in fourth grade. Many of us jump and run within the boundary of the painted circle, trying to avoid being tagged by the large rubber balls that whiz by. One by one kids are eliminated. But not me. I am agile, alert, quick as a cat. Now only I am left. The whole class is trying to hit me, but I fake left and right, and the balls fly harmlessly by. I feel exhilaration in every fiber of my body. I am young and strong and immortal. Then I wake up.
My body, as usual, is sore. My back hurts, and I roll gingerly out of bed. My achilles tendons stay chronically inflamed, so I walk stiffly towards the bathroom, knowing that after a hot shower I will feel almost mobile. I glance in the mirror and remind myself, again, that next week I will turn forty.
I’m not happy about it–this turning forty. Not at all. No, I don’t like it. I want to be younger, start over, try again.
It’s not that I buy into our culture’s obsessive and strange affair with youth, beauty and sex. The purely physical side of aging does not disturb me, although I admit that next time around I would probably use a lot more sunscreen.
What bothers me is a nagging suspicion that I could have done better this time around. The lessons I have learned came painfully, slowly, often too late to get the most out of them. I hate realizing that I could have, should have, chosen other routes but didn’t. Wishing I had known better, I want to go back and replay certain scenes, or entire acts.
In this respect, reaching forty is much more traumatic for me than reaching thirty was. Turning thirty represented a relatively painless letting go of youth. No longer being “carded” when buying alcohol only mildly hurt my feelings. At thirty the horizons stretched wide open, wistfully, out toward infinity.
No questioning glances stabbed at me for being single; no biological clock ticked; no one expected my career path paved; no one sought evidence of financial solvency. No questions of responsibility or accountability loomed before me. Turning thirty simply entailed crossing over and out of youth.
But forty. At forty I assess. Where am I now? What have I accomplished? Am I who and where I expected to be? Is it true I can best predict my future by examining my past?
This thought frightens me. Nowhere in my past have I felt like an adult. It is only when I am with my two children, 5 and 3, or with the pre-teens from next door, or with the college students at the nearby university, that I notice my age. Only when I see my reflection in their eyes do I realize that, indeed, I must be an adult. What a peculiar surprise.
I don’t feel like an adult. I am a young college grad trying to find my place in a confusing world. I am a teenager, blushing self-consciously in an embarrassing situation. Playing sports, I am nine again, thrilled to make a nice move or smart play. I am the toddler who gets left out and pushed aside whenever I try to keep up with the big kids. At times I am even an infant, seeking the pure warmth, encompassing arms and total solace of an omnipotent parent. Then I am safe.
But I am not an infant; I am almost forty. In the bathroom mirror I smile, frown, then grimace, experimenting to see which expressions reveal the most wrinkles. I step back a few feet, dim the lights and look again. Now I look younger, and somehow, less afraid.
When my kindergardener crawls into my lap and digs her way into my armpit, I comfort her. Her confidence in me is overwhelming. She does not know that I often wish our places were reversed.
Approaching forty, I feel regret. When I was young, all doors stood open, but none looked intriguing enough. My path lay clearly before me, wide and inviting; all I needed to do was pursue some general direction. But time and time again I passed the open doors. What was I expecting?
I could have been a classical cellist; I had talent. Perhaps I was not quite so extraordinary as my older brother, but if I had chosen that direction and applied myself, I am sure I could be playing professionally now.
In college, I was encouraged by several professors to enter Ph.D. programs. They promised me Teaching Assistant positions. No, I told them. I wasn’t interested; I wasn’t ready.
My parents had always said to choose something that interested me. “You’ve got to love your work,” Mom said. “Money isn’t everything.”
I waited to discover my calling. I thought it would suddenly strike me, like a bolt of lightning. No bolt struck.
After college I moved from one job to another. I was considered a good worker, but I never tried to advance. Again, opportunities presented themselves. Step on forward, employers waved to me. But, no thanks, I’d think. It’s just another boring job.
So I played. I traveled. I lived in France, Italy, then Germany. I learned foreign languages. I met interesting people.
I tried briefly a few times to grow up. I returned to America and worked as a sales representative for almost six years. I earned well for the first time, too. I began to believe I’d achieved a bit of respectability. I was almost a yuppie.
But I didn’t love my work, so I quit and started traveling again.
In the emotional realm things weren’t much different. When the right relationship comes along, I thought, I will know it. I regret my naivetÈ, my ignorance, my poor judgment. Only looking back can I see clearly that the relationships I wasn’t interested in were the ones I should have wanted to pursue. More open doors passed; many wrong doors chosen.
And I regret years lost to recreational drug use, only marijuana, but lost just the same. By getting high I put my emotional life on hold. Again, only in retrospect could I admit the degree of damage done.
What was I avoiding? Opening doors? Looking behind the closed ones perhaps? I sense it was the choosing itself I would not face.
Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by life. “Will I ever feel like an adult?” I cried to my father. I was thirty-one, and he, sixty-eight.
“I don’t know,” he smiled. “I still don’t feel like one.”
Now, approaching forty, I realize that much of my choosing has been done by default. Self-acceptance, so consciously sought for so many years, has arrived quietly and, ironically, of its own accord, simply as a function of age. My past mistakes and present imperfections no longer have the power to upset me as they would have earlier. Time has dulled even the most painful of memories.
And I have a lot to be thankful for. I made some good choices. I married a good man and have two happy, well-adjusted children. And I still have my health.
Life is like dodgeball. We’ll all be eliminated eventually. Success depends to a great extent upon anticipation, agility, and adaptability. But another factor–luck, pure luck–plays a role as well. I’ve been quite lucky, actually.
Others from my fourth grade class haven’t fared so well. Marty Walker suffered permanent brain damage at 14, while joy riding with other drunk teenagers. George Swenson killed himself freebasing cocaine in college. Janet Halgren, 35, died of a cancerous brain tumor.
But I’m still playing, still agile, still alert. Perhaps I haven’t yet achieved what I might have, but I haven’t been knocked out of the game. And at moments, even approaching forty and for no apparent reason, I enjoy fresh rushes of childlike exhilaration.
I’m a survivor. I’m like my house plants that friends make fun of. I don’t know how to tend them, so they grow twiggy and awkward, twisting around lamps and wandering down chair legs. But they grow, their way.
Thirty for me meant abandoning physical youth; forty means embracing, albeit reluctantly, my adulthood. No, I’m not happy about reaching forty. Sure, I feel regret, but even regret has lost its sharp edge. Things could have been much worse.
Recently I spoke again to my father, now 77. I complained half-heartedly, mostly for form’s sake, that I wanted to go back and try again. I wished I were younger, I told him.
“Ah,” he sighed, quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, “…ah, to be 70 again.”
How the Ball Bounced, by Nancy Nerenberg 