Standing Outside the Fire...So This is Forty

I'm actually on the cusp of 41, it's a matter of days away. And I thought to myself,

"How can I be turning 41, I'm not used to 40 yet!"

That's the funny thing about birthdays', they don't care if  'you're ready', if you've achieved the goals you set for yourself, ready or not, here it comes.

I used to love them. Frankly, I still do in some ways. Despite what this blog may make you think, I really do have a  fun side, I love cake, I love balloons and crepe paper streamers. I always wanted a piñata. My friend Christina M and I tried to make one once, my first, last and only attempt at papier mache.  I guess we didn't give it enough time to dry and it turned into a gummy lump once the balloon on the inside was popped. All the candy we tried filling it with got soggy and melted into an inedible sugary mass. This is Florida after all and we have humidity like you only can in the tropics. To wit, I've never actually seen my hair un-frizzy...and that's with using straightener, a blow dryer, and much brute strength manhandling of a round hairbrush.

But there is part of me that still likes the idea of cake, candles, ice cream and fun.

But then 40 takes hold and you feel like, "Wow I really am a grown up now!"

This year it has only gotten worse and more grown up. You know those ads on TV, where the heart attack victim to be is given a sinister note that says, 'Your heart attack will happen today'; I used to find them creepy and off-putting, but lately I've begun to reconsider. If only that could have happened to me, maybe the day after my 40th birthday, someone, perhaps God, could have just dropped me a note,

"Dear Jill,

This is going to be a rough year, your fortieth. You are going to get laid off from your job in the first month of 2015. One of your co-workers is going to die the week after that. You will flounder and struggle month after month through a job search, then try to carve out a new career only to have that stall. Then your Auntie G will die and your Dad will be diagnosed with a serious illness that will suddenly make him, for the first time, 'old' and vulnerable. You will be required to remember doctor visits and prescriptions, accompany him to the hospital, for glasses, watch his diet, go to Walgreens repeatedly for all of the paraphernalia that goes with aging.

Try not to panic.

Love,

God"

At least then, I'd know what I was up against. I'm always better with everything, if I can just prepare for it. I like to make lists, and set goals. Doesn't God know that none of this is written down in my five-year plan? I mean, I start planning for Christmas in September. I'm on Hallmark's mailing list for the Keepsake Ornament catalog and they send me a card for my birthday because I'm always in their stores planning for holidays, buying birthday cards, sympathy cards, boss day cards.
Planning, planning, planning.

I guess the hardest part of 40 has been the realization that you can't plan for everything.
It's funny how we keep trying though, whole industries have sprung up around the human need to prepare ahead, with Filofaxes, Palm Pilots, Blackberry's and now I-Phone and Droids.  You can plan your vacation on Expedia or Trivago, plan your summer reading on Amazon, try to prognosticate your future through horoscopes, numerology or other at Astrology.com. You can even prepare for your exit from this world through Final Expense Insurance Burial Plans.

I guess the one thing you can't prepare for is grief. And not the grieving after a person has died, I'm talking about the grieving for the way life used to be. Grieving for the endless summers, pool parties in the backyard, eating birthday cake in your swimsuit, line dancing at the local country bar or honky-tonk depending on where you are from, eating sand-dusted sandwiches on New Symrna Beach, the icy cold of a Frozen Gold soft serve cone cooling your sun-burned face or falling asleep in the car on the way home from a Wednesday night church service with Eddie Rabbit on the radio crooning about "Driving his life away" because Dad was at the wheel and you knew you were safe in the back of the station wagon.

There seemed to be more of everything then, more time, more simple pleasures, more stars....

I can't change forty, but maybe I can change me.
Maybe at 41, I need to stop planning so much and start savoring a little more.
Maybe Garth Brooks was right, "Life is not tried, it is merely survived. If you're standing outside the fire..."