40

I see you, Forty. Your hairline is thin and your waistline full. The bags under your eyes were packed thoroughly with souvenirs and anger. Each wrinkle on your face is a lesson learned, and each scar the lesson taught. You are the looking glass and you are through it. We all know that there are fairer in the land, and like the apple once bright and polished, they can bite me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t see it coming. Somewhere, a few years back, I looked up and saw a glimpse of you on the horizon. There was gray on my chin and a stiffness to my back that hadn’t been there the last I had checked. It seemed that my list of things to do was losing ground to the one of memories I had made. They say you are over the hill. I say the downside of this hill is a mountain. Hugh Grant knows what I’m talking about.

I see you, Forty, and I pour you on the ground accordingly.

Yesterday morning I woke to the sounds of silence, which are rare and fleeting in a house full of pets and boys. There were handmade cards on my nightstand and a touch of tears hiding inside them. A lesser man may have stayed dry-eyed, but I am “the best daddy ever” and I have the card to prove it.

The day went on with gifts and phone calls and more Facebook messages than one person deserves. It ended with the linger of a dinner too expensive settling on my breath and a sleeping child growing heavy in my arms. It reminded me of nights in my 30s.

They say the memory is the first to go, but I can’t remember ever remembering more.

I have been forty for a day and the world is the same. Yet there are glimpses of sunshine amid the sheets of rain, and the occasional branch is showing the occasional bud. I walked outside this morning wearing a sweater, and the air was brisk but comfortable.  We stood there, everything and me, and for a moment it was all at ease. For a moment my breath fell easy. It was a moment for the seizing.

Forty, you are the new spring. May you spring eternal.