This is 40
After several weeks of running up and down the high school football bleachers, Stu felt good. “I think it’s helping my tennis game,” he offered dryly. He then promptly shanked a backhand over the fence that landed on some kid’s tricycle.
“Well now I just feel fat.”
This is 40 – in all its comedy of errors, its humbling moments. It’s arriving home late from work with an overflowing garbage can and a wife who’s been dealing with kids coloring on walls and telling everyone, to heck with the house, let’s go out for ice cream. It’s having to take a work call while helping convince your daughter that 25 minus 1 does not equal 70 and looking at her sulking while you whisper, “Five more minutes.”
Forty is fun when you least see it coming, like finally getting two hours to rake the front yard, only to get sidetracked when the neighbors create a gargantuan leaf pile – you bean kids with the nerf ball with throws they can’t possibly catch as they dive in, but of course it rains that night, leaving a brown spot. Forty is taking Charlie over G’s house for an impromptu street hockey game, only to don yourself starting defensemen with Steve who steals the rolling orange puck from a 5 year old and feeds you for a wrist shot you pump past a 4 year old named Sam. Sam cries a little but you hear the Brass Bonanza play in your head, arms raised – so the tears are really more like music, just like those days on Whitman Drive when you and Wilmot and Sumner from the old neighborhood played the Whaler theme song after every score. I love those days. I see my kids reliving them. They are me.
Forty is also realizing that you never got a blue ribbon for coming in last, much less second, so you say “get over it” to your kid as he cries because you made a good play and “took over their game” – but then of course struggling yourself to get back on defense as Charlie wizzes past you with speed and energy you just don’t have anymore.
For me, 40 is working so hard all week but finally getting to relax, watching the cousins put on a concert, swatting the night bugs, but not minding so much because you have a glass of Chianti.
Forty is helping Todd make up new holidays like Preve (the day before Christmas Eve) because you sort of don’t want to admit it but you like Christmas season because your family made a big deal of it, and let’s face it, some of your neighbors have become extended family.
Forty is a lot about taking a step back and not wishing or wanting but being – like taking your wife out to dinner and talking about your visions, your vacations, but then invariably talking about your kids by the time the entrees arrive. It’s ordering the Pino and the pesto dish, only to give both away because she likes them better than hers and because you love her and frankly you’ll get half of it anyways. You order coffee with the check like your parents would have, only so you can stay up to finish that powerpoint report the boss needs by 8, just so you can go out to dinner again next month.
Being 40, I’m thinking, is being aware – or trying to be, like two weeks ago when I was locked in on Father Tom’s homily at Sunday Mass (something about me being the gift) only before the punchline to have my kid smack his sister in the arm, leading to uncontrollable tears, forcing us to tiptoe out of the pew as though we had committed a crime. The older folks behind us do the sign of the cross – maybe they’re praying for us, or maybe they’re just thanking God we’re leaving.
Forty is remembering the good ole days, not your 20s, but your childhood and then trying to relive it in ways that don’t make you look like a dummy. This summer, I danced on that line while diving for a sinking liner in a parent-kid, end of camp softball game. Don had already made fun of me that day for bringing my kid’s plastic Lightening McQueen glove to the game. Reminded me of that time in Little League in 1979 when a couple of the kids on the team made fun of my wooden bat. Dad had put a piece of white tape on the Louisville Slugger right about where he wanted me to choke up. By the end of practice, Hutch, Wilmot and Van Pelt weren’t making fun anymore, after I had laced a few singles with that bat. I’ve lost touch with Wilmot but to this day there’s not a competitor I’ve had a more intense rivalry with. He once beat me 8-5 in hockey, 30-26 in hoops, 3-2 in ping pong and 4-1 in backyard golf—all in a 2-hour span. “I’m not even trying and I’m still winning” he would say, just to egg me on.
The ball was sinking fast so I left my feet, stretched out my left arm and squeezed the Lightening McQueen glove just as the soft ball in my mitt. There was sharp pain in my left wrist but I held the plastic glove in the air. “Great grab,” Don said. There’s a certain measure of competitiveness in Don that reminds me of my childhood rivalry with Wilmot, one that is good for a guy at 40 who needs to win and lose every once in a while.
As I hit 40 I realize how crazy my family can be but I also get it that they introduced me to so much of who I am. Dad used to take me to the tennis courts with mom and Laura when we were little, even as teenagers. I’d pair with mom and get wicked frustrated every time my sister passed us with a topspin backhand down the line, because mom hadn’t covered the alley. Losing to them was no fun and the only saving grace was a slice of pizza at the Town Line restaurant with the big fish tank. I love those times – ma would order a beer and we’d think that was funny. The best days were trips to the college where dad worked. I brought 20 cents and put it in the brown soda pop machine with the little plastic cup that first filled with crushed ice, then with syrupy grape soda. The courts were just over a small hill that seemed like a mountain then, just a few steps outside of the training and locker rooms and a tiny gym with a parquet floor where I used to practice hitting flattish tennis balls with my wooden Bancroft. My sister and I would hit with players on the college team sometimes and then with families he knew from the school. I’d play with Emily—a girl I later took to high school prom–then we’d all eat hot dogs. These were good days and I love tennis because of them. By the time I was in high school Tag, Vinny and Roy would join me at the town courts for doubles and singles – we’d play til all hours, then drink our “Big Gulps” we paid $1.25 for at the Food Bag.
After Stu’s backhand shank he laughed a little and proceeded to charge the net on the next point – Gabe ripped a low backhand right back at him, shoulder high, but I’m guessing Stu’s reflexes aren’t what they used to be. The furry Penn 3 ricocheted off his forehead, while he was swinging, which is an awkward sort of thing to watch live. It was a low point for Stu and we didn’t talk much during the next changeover, but our rallies got better. I’m realizing that playing tennis at 40 is less about strategy and more about beating the piss out of the ball.
We tried to outplay the 15 year olds four courts away but the harder we swung, the stranger we looked and the less they noticed us. In between games, on changeovers, we complained about how doing well in work was actually a loss lately because it brought on more responsibility, more time away from family—things that just weren’t important in our 20s. You do so well last year that your business, your boss “plans for you to do even better this year” Gabe said – so the goal line to achieve financial incentive moves. As you win, you lose. But in these moments I got a sense that I share the same struggle as these guys do. After an intense finish, we washed down our below average play with a cold bottle of $5 nectar.
There were 12 of us around the table the night I turned 40 … and 14 years ago I didn’t know any of them. Not one. Not even Bridget and probably on a lot of levels, not even myself. It’s not a stretch to say that I felt a little lost back in my mid 20s, like my life until that moment had been a series of first drafts – of first dates and first halves, of 4-year increments, but no complete games. I felt like each time I moved to the next phase, the phase changed me.
And so here I sat, 40, with a lamb burger and a light beer and I looked around that table and realized I may not have known them for that long but they were very much about my past – they had been helping me reconnect to it. Sure, on the way to 40 I may have lost touch to some degree with those good friends from long ago, but I don’t forget them – and I feel like more than ever before I know exactly who I am.