Facing Forward with a Forty-Three Year-Old Face: The Best is Yet to Come

I am in California this week with my kids.  The rather fancy timeshare in which I am staying has one of those mirrors with a light around its perimeter which lights you in a way that you don’t usually see yourself.  It was in this light tonight where I finally saw THAT guy for the first time.  There are wrinkled creases crawling out from either eye, there is a weathered worn look to my skin, and there are grey accents fringing the sides of my head and in my 5 o’clock (+day) shadow – it is vacation after all.  It made me remember when I was younger and wondering when I would see myself as an older version of me.  Didn’t people in movies always seems older, even if you knew that they were you same age?  I wondered when that day would come when Maverick and Goose would look more like my sons than me.  When Eastwood in a Spaghetti Western would be my junior.  When I would look more like Di Niro than Gaylord Focker.  

Now being back in the dating scene for that past two years, I have occasionally found myself out with a rather deceptively mature lady, who just happens to still be in her 20’s (and violating my own creepy dating index).  This time spent with these dates who studied in history class those things that I witnessed first hand (yes, there were once two Germanys) has helped stave off this aging epiphany.  Likewise, crawling my spandex clad Spartan buttock though mountain mud pits has further helped delayed this realization.   But today, the night be before my 43^rd birthday, I finally saw it.  I am officially the older version of myself. And the verdict,… I’m fine with it.  

These have been some well-earned miles.  I have begat five amazing kids.  I have traveled to remote parts of the world.  I have survived a divorce with minimal anger and resentment in my heart.  I’ve lived in the New England woods, on a Utah mountain top, and in one of the three cities in Outer Mongolia.  I’ve seen the sunrise over the Atlantic and just watched the sunset over the Pacific only a few hours ago.  I have loved, lost, and now loved again – hopefully for the last time.  And I can say it has been a pretty darn good ride.  Yes, there were some days, particularly in the divorce time, where I pulled into an empty dark house felling angry and telling myself that my life...well...sucked, but that was my wounded heart speaking.  When my head chimed it, it looked around me, judged my life, and gave me a more optimistic verdict.  I was doing really well.  Sure there are scars and failure, but anyone who has neither really hasn't tried living.  Life is full of bumps and bruises and since none of us makes it out alive, why bemoan the fact that it hurts at time.  Instead, enjoy the vistas, new love, sunsets, kisses, smiling children and those micro-moments of bliss when they are within our grasp so these memories can fuel us through those less inspiring eras.

Now as I look at this face, dawning on the day of being a year older, I’m excited for what the next 43 years will bring.  I kind of feel like its already been a great journey that everything else is bonus time, like when you hit every ride at Disneyland by 4:00 PM and the park doesn’t close until 10:00.   There is still much time left for fun and the best may be yet to come.  And while this face is a little weathered and old, it is not frightening young children yet.  I complain about a perpetual sore back, but I can still do the splits - after proper stretching.  I don’t dive for Frisbees anymore, but I can give a teenager a run for his money in sprinting after one.  My burning ambition to change the world has softened, but my desire to make life meaningful for my children and my loved ones has emboldened.  As I hope to soon move out of the La La Land that is this midlife singlehood and back into “real “life,” I see myself writing fewer profound posts and instead living a more profound life.   

So thank you 43 years.  Thank you for these 43 meaningful trips around the sun.  I plan to make many more such orbits in what may be my most meaningful years yet.  For this is my future, a hope unwritten.  I plan to not just counting the seasons or the months as they go by, but to log the sunrises and the sunsets that frame the moment of each and every day to ensure that I will have a life full of meaningful memories to carry with me across the eternities.