Three decades, six decades

When I was 22 years old an older friend — my employer, actually, who was himself about 40 — said:

“I think my self image kind of froze at your age. If I don’t look in the mirror I think I am probably about 22”

That thought has stuck with me for thirty years now.

I think maybe one reason I had so much trouble with marriage on my first attempt was that I couldn’t quite reconcile my idealized self-image (“outdoorsy semi-drifter”) with the reality of “office drone with in-laws.”

During our first separation I think I settled that discrepancy. That was about twenty years ago now.

After my divorce I still kind of held myself as “young newlywed” even though I wasn’t actually married any more. I had some Romantic Adventures before I met Jenny but after about one week with her I knew I was done with adventuring. So for a long while — my thirties, mostly — the “young newlywed” template endured.

It was easy to reconfigure that template into “parent of young children,” which is probably still where my self-image still is. I’m perpetually confused that almost-adults live with me now. Being fortyish was good and I felt exactly that age the whole time, I never had the experience of thinking I was still 22. (I may, in fact, have peaked at exactly age 42) In my head was “late thirties/early forties” for a decade-plus, beginning well before my actual late thirties.

Around the time I turned fifty I said:

“the most Fifty feeling is imagining that if I could sleep for a week or two I would wake up and be thirty again.”

That was only a couple years ago but depressingly I no longer feel that way. There will never be enough sleep to make me thirty again. The warranty has expired on lots of body parts, some expected (so many aches) and some not (I cannot gain muscle now for the life of me).

The two summers I did archaeology at that gig 30 years ago were two of the best summers of my life. My memory of them is crystal clear, to individual days. What I was wearing, who I was kissing, what I was drinking, where I was puking.

The shocking thing is not that it was so long ago, but that the intervening decades passed so quickly. This is not profound, I know. The days crawl and the years fly.

In all likelihood, given the hand genetics has dealt me, if I am lucky and work hard on my health, I might maybe have another three decades in me. Even then I would be outliving almost all my male ancestors. I’m fine with having an expiration date, but I know that those three decades will pass so much faster than the last three.