This Is Us

The Quiet Magic of Being 45

A dispatch from midlife

Photo: D. Sharon Pruitt Pink Sherbet Photography/Getty Images

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…