In the arrogance & despair of youth, I never thought I'd make it to fifty. I didn't know exactly what would happen to me - would I take my own life? would I die of carelessness? would something awful & unfair happen? Who knows? I just had this sense - & I suppose lots of self-involved sensitive souls feel this way - that I probably wouldn't make it past my twenties.
Then, you know, it happened. Suddenly I was no longer a broken-hearted eighteen-year-old, I was a broken-hearted twenty-eight-year-old. Then thirty-eight, then - wonder of wonders - fifty.
For a long time I really, really wanted to keep a journal, & tried to do so in fits & starts throughout my life. The trouble is, I don't do anything really important, & I don't have any real insights into anything. So a few years ago, I started writing down what I did during the day, sometimes just a checklist, to give me a sense of what my life was like at the time. I did this for my fiftieth birthday & it simply didn't sound special or interesting when I just read about it. In fact, it sounds a lot like most of my time in Dallas/Fort Worth: dog walking & lots of driving. I also picked my wife up at the airport. I did that a lot.
What I don't think I did was take stock of myself, meditate on my mortal situation, put things into some context like "there is now more life behind me than in front of me." Why not, I wonder.
First of all, it's because I've never felt my age. Not having been a terribly physical person, the most I notice is greying beard & receding hairline, & loss of vision. I have to wear reading glasses now. That's the most old my body seems.
Second, I think I never adulted as much as everyone else. I didn't have kids, & I spent a great deal of time at colleges, consistently surrounded by young people. (It was a great sadness to me that I couldn't help out at KTCU, the college station in Fort Worth. I miss all the kids at WRFL.) That tends to keep one relatively young in spirit, even as one appears to turn into a crotchety old timer.
& finally, I stopped making a big deal of my birthday maybe a decade ago. I don't have a party, I don't do anything special, I don't even want cards or other shit from family. It's really just another day, & I'd much rather mark time by things I care about doing - like my radio program - than something like a birthday ritual.
Now, this week's show has the theme "fifty" but I turned fifty last year. So it has nothing to do with my age, which is currently fifty-one. I'll try to talk tomorrow about why the theme is fifty. For today's shabby essay, I just wanted to reflect on what I thought, if anything about turning fifty. It turns out, not much.
Which is maybe too bad; many folks wanted me to see it as a milestone. I will tell you that I did drive to see my mother on January 20, 2018 - it was a Saturday - & she was moving out of her apartment into my sister's house. My nephew Josh & his wife showed up. I went to have dinner with old friends from KVRX at a place I really do miss, Kalachandji's in Dallas. & I picked my wife up from the airport; she had gone to Lexington for a funeral.
Maybe sixty will be a bigger deal.
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