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This Is Us
The Quiet Magic of Being 45
A dispatch from midlife
It’s my birthday.
I am 45 years old — which lands me in the distinctly unremarkable “middle” of all things. For some (no doubt American) reason, my imagined middle of all things is a parking lot.
Balloon in hand, I stand in a wide open field of cement, annoyingly distanced from a playful, spirited gathering throngs of people are streaming toward and also way too far from the bathrooms. I kind of want to go have fun with everyone else, but I also really need to pee.
Which way should I go? I ask myself.
I don’t know, she answers.
I think this is how 45 works, we agree.
From here, I glimpse a hill in the distance — beyond the bathrooms, of course. After peeing, signs direct you toward it. “Soon, you’ll be over that thing,” my 10-year-old reminds me as he climbs out of our car.
Thanks, kid. I know.
He grins, slams the door, and runs toward the faraway music.
In case it isn’t obvious, I don’t love my birthday.
But in fairness to midlife, I’m not sure I ever did.
My mother begs to differ — apparently, birthdays brought me great joy as a child. I take pleasure in her narrations, but don’t object to the tattered party hat I now wear.
Life is most interesting in the pauses before and after the scenes we’re all programmed to capture and frame.
At this point in my life, I find scheduled peak experiences to be inherently disappointing. I prefer my peaks to come unannounced. And by peak, I mean: deeply satisfying, layered, and delightful — not bursts of noisy adrenaline that demand attention and shouts of “hooray.”
I’m a lap swimmer, after all. I leave the high dive alone. I like Thursdays and Sundays more than Fridays and Saturdays. I consider December 30th loaded with reflection and promise, yet December 31st feels confronting, almost aggressive in its shallow claim to be special.
