My son turns 40 today. At one point in his pre-natal months, a rather complicated pregnancy, there was some doubt about his reaching any birthdays at all, even his ur-birthday, that is to say, his birth, but here he is, my first-born, a man in full. When your own birthdays have less and less significance as they multiply, the birthdays of others can mark the passage of time with greater salience. Give one pause. My father, at 93, couldn’t believe that he had sons in their 60s: An old, old man with old men for progeny. He was not long for this world.
For these 40 years, my son—and his sister a few years later—have been the unmitigated wonder and pleasure of my life, a buoyant tag-team of now early middle-agists composing an acerbic fam-dramedy forty years running. I cannot imagine more delightful long-term company. But as I watch them in their majority living the fullest of lives, I cannot remember having such energy and so little seeming time. How do they do it? How did I, if I did? Even as I trundle toward the great abyss, yet I do not wish to return to their heady days, that comparative youth.
Forty was not a good year for me. Things falling apart. And work. But for him, they continue to come together, which is as it should be. Thus, I will enjoy his 40th with a special savor: the wisdom of an old man.
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