Looking at 60...From 58

Here comes Sixty...

No, I'm not sixty...yet, but I feel like Sally Albright.

In the movie "When Harry Met Sally" she breaks down in a long Kleenex-filled crying jag about not being married. And finally it peaks when she comes clean with the revelation that her problem is...she's going to be forty!

"When?" Harry asks.

"Someday"

"In eight years," Harry reminds her.

"But it's there! It's like a big dead end!

Milestone birthdays are mostly mental, but somehow my body seems to have gotten the memo before I did.

This past year was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of snowbirds, it was the age of morning back pain, it was the epoch of qualifying for the 55 and over tennis tournaments, it was the epoch of knee braces, it was the season of sunscreen, it was the season of statins, it was the spring of selling Marketresearch.com, it was the winter of Dry January.

Here is a fun sampling of the comments and questions I received in last 365 days:

    - After a an x-ray the doctor told me "You have normal deterioration for a man your age."

    - At a recent physical therapy session I was asked: "What color did your hair used to be?"

    - Upon learning my age one "youngish" person said: "I didn't think you were that old?" And they were being nice!

    - I used to think plaque was something on my teeth, not my heart valves. The doctor recommended statins. "How long should I take them?" "Forever," he replied with a straight face.

I should have seen this coming. After a haircut my smock looks like I was caught in a small snow squall. 

Isn't it always the pictures that tell us the story we don't tell ourselves. Those moments you get a glimpse into how the rest of the world sees you, physically. 

Forty was supposed to be the big one, but I barely noticed it. The kids were 9, 7 and 5 and it was less mid-life crisis-y than I'd been told.

But turning sixty is different. I've been to lots of 60th birthday parties, and one thing I've heard in the toasts and roasts is it does something to the system. It focuses the mind.

"Intentionality," one friend said. "It makes you think, What am I doing? How am I spending my time?"

Other observations from this year:

    Parts are past their warranty: More friends had pieces and parts removed and re-placed: ACL, shoulders, rotator cuffs, knees and hips. 

    Less drinking (some of you): When the cocktail menu comes, there's a lot more, "Oh, just a glass of wine," and a surprising amount of Michelob Ultra.

    Attire: Friends come outside with floppy hats and enough sunscreen to make them look like Jason from Halloween.

    Equipment: They prepare for golf and tennis like gladiators entering the arena—knee and elbow braces, ankle wraps, and an entire CVS worth of kinesiology tape.

I've been recommended or gifted no less than 10 times the book Outlive: the Science and Art of Longevity.

What else do I hear from my fellow Generation X'ers: We're no longer the kid in the room. That there was a time, only moments ago, when we were the youngest person in the board meeting and somehow that slipped out from under us.

While jolting, in many ways it's Clarifying.

In writing a short story an ending is supposed to be "surprising, but inevitable."

Sixty is no dead end, and fifty-eight is an opportunity.

These changes are surprising, but also inevitable.

Take Your Father to Work Day

 

One afternoon ten years ago we were living in London and on my way back from a lunch meeting I found myself near my daughter's school. I thought it was my opportunity to catch my kid in action, to see her life up close, but from a distance. I knocked on the school's front door they escorted me to a hallway outside her classroom where I watched her, just for a moment in her natural habitat. 

Maybe it was her age, or mine, but I had been lamenting all the experiences, all this life, she was having that I was no longer privy to.

Once the kids start school we see them briefly in the morning before the action of their day and then in the exhausted after. Once they go off to college we only get holidays and weekends. Post-college it's whenever they can fit us in.

Peering through that glass slice of her sixth grade classroom door I watched them raise their hands, speak out of turn, make mistakes, laugh. Until one of the students spotted me, the pointing began, the gig was up. My daughter march to the door, her face the color of fresh tomatoes.

"What are you dooooingggg?"

She was 12, I was 45. 

Cluelessly I thought we would make a memory. In the midst of a regular day there would be that time I showed up to her class and made it special.

But later than evening I learned what I had done. Talking with her older brother and sister she explained the day from her vantage: 

"Everyone saw this guy looking in the window...and it was dad!!" she said.

My other daughter confirmed, "He's so weird."

"They all asked if it was my dad," she said. 

"And what did you say?" my son asked.

"I told them no."

So this is the backdrop of our interactions, this is the lens through which I calculate how to connect with our third child who doesn't like surprises and is private about the things she wants kept quiet.

Last week I found myself in her city, it was my birthday, we are now 56 and 22. I thought enough time had passed. 

No I didn't surprise her at work, Instead I asked if she wouldn't mind if I joined her on her commute. Door-to-door or whatever, through the New York City subway systems and into Queens, just to be a fly on the wall for one of her days.

To my surprise, she texted me back, "sure."

My birthday morning is usually a time for leisure, but this day was hectic. I wanted to be at the subway before her, I needed coffee, my phone failed to charge overnight.

I kept looking down the subway steps...did I miss her, did she forget?

And then like a movie star she made her entrance onto the sidewalk where I looked like either a paparazzo or a pervert. But I was just an adoring dad.

 

She was smiling, and now so was I.

Down into the bowels.

A crowded sweaty subway.

Through to Grand Central, then over ground.

.

And then a 20-minute walk through the neighborhoods until we reached the building. 

"Thanks," I said, ready to leave.

"Do you want to see the office?" she asked.

"I don't want to embarrass you I just wanted to see part of your day."

"Nobody is here yet, so you can come up," she said without irony.

I was reminded of a time last year when I bumped into my other daughter at a New York City WeWork. Her boss asked if I wanted to come see the rest of their space. My daughter intervened..."It's not take your father to work day."

So when I got the green light I pressed the accelerator, I climbed the stairs to a bustling office and then to a small well-lit space with a series of desks. She sat down, logged on and began to work. She told me how to let myself out. I left the office with wings on my feet, perhaps that's why I boarded the wrong subway and ended up in Forest Hills before switching trains.

I figured it out and long hauled it back to Soho where the rest of my birthday commenced. 

I remember when they were babies wondering if I would view them differently when they grew up. I'd never experienced someone's entire arc. Would I remember their babyface, their voice, their cry? But you forget. An old picture or video reminds you, but it's like seeing another person. That's not them any more.

You cannot remember the baby when you see the adult. I cannot hear the laugh of that child in this full-grown human. And it will happen again, the photos from today will fade and she will shed this life for another, and so will I.

Michael Gerson wrote in his famous essay on children heading off to college, that parenthood is ultimately a lesson in humility: "The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else's story. And it is enough."

I don't need more than this anymore. It's her life. I can't show up and watch her through a sliver of window anymore. So when she let's me in, the rest of the world can go away.