"I'm trying to make
it to one hundred—I really want the party." This from Micah's Grandpa
Herb, who informs me when I ask that he is now 95 "and a
half." I love that he adds that, sounding more like Theo, a kindergartener,
informing me of that extra half year. His family—that is, three kids and their
spouses, eight grandkids, and twelve great-grandchildren, among others—threw
him a bash for his ninetieth, complete with DJ, and another for his
95th (this one more a brunch) but it's the thought of the festivities
in store that Herb says is motivating staying well for the next few years. And
there's no reason to think he won't get there. My own grandfather just turned
99; in the summer of 2011 he had a retrospective showing seven decades
of his painting, yet he maintained he still had more in store, more conundrums
of the canvas to figure out.
Since then, my
mother-in-law Sheila, and my father, Erik, both celebrated their 70th
birthdays, while I celebrated my 40th. Each of us tussled with the existential
birthday demons that loom largest around those decade markers, like shadowy
stalkers hiding behind a street sign. "It's all downhill from here,"
says my dad, even though that's hardly true; "I've got maybe ten or
fifteen good years left, tops, and I want to use them," says Sheila, who's
determined to travel, soak up her grandchildren, shop, see things, do it all.
"God, can I really be
40?" I asked, "how is that possible?" We are tentative, we
resist moving forward, we bemoan the things we used to do, and the tauter
versions of ourselves that used to be.
Then I got breast cancer
and I wished like anything that I could just go back to being nervous about my
crow's feet. To just be able to walk through the door of my fourth decade,
without feeling as if I were being pushed down a chute to a rapidly and
radically different body, and an insecure hold on that longevity that, truth be
told, I had subconsciously assumed was part of my birthright. Chemotherapy has
the headlining side-effects, but long after it's over, the changes associated
with all that’s involved in cancer treatment can feel like you've taken the
fast train to crones-ville. "It's hard to grow old gracefully," I
muttered bitterly, "when it's happening at warp speed."
