Writer Anne Lamott has said, “Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart…is ageless—all the ages you’ve ever been.” Today I am fifty, and my inside person feels that. It also feels as jubilant as the second grade me who wore her Mork from Ork rainbow suspenders and Wrangler jeans with nothing more weighing her down than whether Mrs. Bishop in the Fairforest Elementary School library would let her sneak and check out more books than she was allowed. Fifty is supposed to be one of those landmark ages that hits a person hard, sends them into a swirling, whirling fit of angst about who they are, what they’re not, and how to recapture their “youth.” I think it was around age 28 that I started to wonder when I would feel that panicky, dread-filled anticipation of “time’s winged chariot” that Andrew Marvell warned was coming for me. I’m still waiting. Yes, I know for whom the bell tolls and that I likely have fewer years ahead of me than behind me; there is no denying that. But I’ve never felt as though having any birthday was cause for black balloons or mock tombstones in my front yard to signify the sobriety of the day. Don’t get me wrong, I do still muse aloud to my college-aged students that I have socks older than they are, but it isn’t to play into the notion that people have a shelf life and once they cease to rock a bikini with thousands of Insta-fans that they are irrelevant; rather, it is in amazement that I’ve been given this gift of time that has been denied to so many.
Fifty always seemed to be the age where people could legitimately begin spouting their wisdom to captive audiences of “youngsters” who were too respectful of their elders to do anything but sit patiently and nod at the right parts of the story. Now that I’m here, though, I feel as though I still regularly make too many of my own mistakes to ever achieve soothsayer status. I do know some things, however, and in practice for a time when people gather round, hanging on my words as though I’m a modern-day Tiresias, I’ll share them now.
Time and birthdays are gifts that many people more deserving than I have not been given, and the best way to honor them is to treat all of my days like the best day ever. Greeting each day with curiosity and gratitude is the only correct response. There is just too darned much stuff to learn and do and not nearly enough time to do them all. How people can express disinterest or soul-deep ennui in a world chock-full of miracles and mysteries is beyond me.
There is so much to see in the world, and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have visited more of it than I expected to, but home truly is where the heart is. And “home” is not necessarily tied to a place, but to people. My people. Home was where five-year-old me was regularly delighted by my sister’s interpretative dance to “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham and where my mom and I sat on the couch sharing a banana topped with peanut butter while watching “Captain Kangaroo” before I was old enough for school. Home was also another physical dwelling where nine-year-old me sat on a tree stump watching my daddy build a barn because he knew after years of my begging that a horse was exactly what I needed. Fast forward many, many years and home is now over a thousand miles away from where I started, and the David with whom I share it is far more impressive than Michelangelo’s version that I saw in Florence.
I just don’t know what the next fifty years might hold, and I never could have predicted all that has occurred in my first half century. I can say with certainty that the aspects of my life where I feel most accomplished have nothing to do with the size of my bank account or any title I could earn. Instead, they are the people who have blessed me with their friendship, constancy, and willingness to call me family. My mama tells a story about us sitting around the kitchen table having a meal with her parents—I’d bet anything that meal included my grandmother’s gravy and biscuits that I’d pay a significant sum to enjoy again—and noticing that my Papa was just sitting and observing everyone. When she asked, “Papa, what do you need?” thinking that he could use a refill of his coffee or another piece of cantaloupe, he responded, “Just time.” And now as I look over the life I’ve been allowed and the people who fill it, I cannot imagine needing one thing more than “just time” to spend appreciating every bit of it.
PartWolf 