50, or: 10 Years Since A Lost Time Accident

Why hello. How are you? How’s it going?

It’s been a minute since I checked in here. A couple weeks, to be exact. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, what with Thanksgiving, a family-wide illness, and the big 5-0 which I turned on December 2nd. Maybe not action packed, but it’s been packed. Where to start?

I had my first big, week-long vacation the week of Thanksgiving. To say I was looking forward to it is an understatement. It’s been one of those work years where I took a day here or a couple days there, or tried to couple up vacation days with company holidays. You know, more bang for my PTO buck. The first three months of the year I probably had two days off(not counting weekends.) My co-worker and close friend was out from the end of January to the first of May dealing with cancer, so I was pretty much on my own from January to May. It’s fine because he got through the cancer and treatments and is currently cancer-free. But it was a long spring, I’ll tell you that.

So Thanksgiving was my big holiday week. It always kind of has been, really. Once the kids got old enough and realized it was just their parents that bought and wrapped the gifts under the Christmas tree it became just a lot of work more than a magical holiday for me. Thanksgiving has always been the holiday I looked forward to; food, family, hanging out, and off from work for four days. I’d typically take Monday through Wednesday off as well, giving myself a nice week-long holiday. The last two or three years, though, I wasn’t able to take it off. This year I put my time in back in the spring. I wasn’t missing out this year.

Of course, when I woke up the Sunday before my Turkey week vacation I was sick. Head was stuffed up, chest was tight, and I had body aches. My wife and oldest were also dealing with it. It was going to be a long week, given that Monday the wife and I were heading to Grand Rapids to pick up a dresser our oldest bought from Ikea. They were out at the store and said there was one we could pick up at a warehouse. When we made the plans to do so we weren’t feeling miserable, so a 2 1/2 hour car ride up north seemed like no big deal. Plus, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving we were moving our other daughter from one 2nd story apartment to another.

Excellent.

Despite the crappy cold we made it through the pick up and move. We spent Thanksgiving at home instead of at my parents. I’d bought a 5 lb turkey breast to cook at a later time, so we had something to eat for Thanksgiving at least. Even though three of us still felt pretty lousy, it was a nice and intimate dinner with us and the kids.

Black Friday Record Store Day I hit up Karma Records and bought live Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans LPs, which were a nice surprise to find. And on the following Saturday the wife and I went back in to Karma and she bought me the Beatles Revolver Deluxe Box Set. John, Karma’s owner, had ordered a copy for someone when it came out but they never picked it up. At its pricey cost nobody was interested in it. I wasn’t at the time, but John had said if I was ever interested he’d cut me a great deal on it. Well I asked him Friday about it and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I was going to wait till I got some writing money but my wife said let’s just get it. So happy early birthday to me!

One of the things I did to pass the time while I was home during vacation was watch some movies. I bought a year subscription to The Criterion Channel, so I ended up watching The Third Man, Orson Welles’ Othello, The Grifters, Suspiria(Argento’s original), and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. It felt pretty good to dive into some movies, honestly. I even bought some Blu Rays during Barnes and Noble’s 50% off Criterion sale.

My wife and I also burnt through the first season of Outer Range on Amazon Prime. I highly recommend this show. It stars Josh Brolin, Lili Taylor, Will Patton, and a great cast of younger actors. It’s like if you combined Yellowstone with time travel and cosmic horror. Dig in.

I had a touch of anxiety last Sunday. I think it was that I was still feeling pretty crappy and not looking forward to going back to work the next day. I had a nice time while I was off, despite being sick. But I still felt like it was a vacation wasted. I didn’t feel like doing anything except watching movies and listening to music. I tinkered with some of my music, but that was it. My last extended time off was spent consoling our daughter because her dog was taken by her ex. It was not a good time. While I’d take 30 sick vacations over that one with my kiddo hurting in a really bad way, I’d still prefer time off with little to know drama or health issues.

Within an hour of being at work that Monday morning I was already feeling better. I think being up and moving and dropping into auto pilot mode was a great way to re-calibrate my brain. By that day’s end I felt I was on the mend.

It seems as if I just turned 40.

I remember that birthday very well. It was a quiet one, spent at home with my then 13, 10, and 8 year olds, and of course my wife. I got a beard trimmer, some socks, and a Walking Dead trade. It was a nice way to turn 40, and to enter what I feel to be the best decade of my life, up to that point. We’d begun to get our financial life in order by starting a budget, which pulled us out of nearly $10,000 in credit card and bank loan debt. I felt like we were finally on a healthy path with our money and our family as a whole. I finally grew into my own skin. I’ve always said I felt much older in my head and heart when I was younger. Once I hit 40 it was as if I’d finally caught up. My dad retired shortly after I turned 40, too, which started a weekly tradition of us getting together for coffee nearly every Saturday morning.

Sure, my 40s weren’t all fantastic. My mother-in-law died in 2014, and in 2016 I had to have spinal surgery to fix a herniated disc. 2017 we were hit with bedbugs thanks to a $350 hotel stay in Chicago. My wife also started a job in 2014 as a school photographer, that while at times seemed like a good opportunity but in the end she realized she hated taking kids pictures and traveling 12 hours a day starting at the ass crack of dawn. I also discovered in 2014 the wonders of anxiety and panic attacks, rearing its ugly head when I was home alone for a week with the kids while my wife was in North Carolina for a work retreat(school clothes shopping during a panic attack is not recommended.)

But despite the cons, my 40s felt like I’d thawed from a longstanding freeze. I became more open with my emotions and feelings. An underlying anger I’d carried with me for years seemed to melt away. I feel like I became more patient and aware of others around me. If I had a problem or something was bugging me I would talk about it, as opposed to sucking it up and holding it in for it to ultimately appear during some random situation.

So yeah, it seems as if that 40th birthday was just here. Yet, as of this past Saturday I’m now 50. Ten years moved along like clouds on a windy, Midwestern day; pivotal moments in my kids’ lives that were monumental are now merely echoes in my mind. Hazy Polaroids coming in and out of focus, becoming clearer only when I really think about them. Drivers licenses, high school graduations, band competitions, heart aches, college graduations, vacations, more heartaches, and growing up to figure things out. Turning 50 is a period at the end of a very long chapter. One I’ll hold onto for a good long while.

How did I celebrate an occasion like turning 50? I took Friday off and my oldest and I drove down to Indianapolis to the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Vonnegut has been a hero of mine since I first read Breakfast of Champions when I was 15. He’s the perfect amount of humor, heart, heaviness, and hope. He’s also a fellow Hoosier so that always gave me hope that I didn’t have to become a corn-shucking basketball dribbler(David Letterman did this for me as well.)

Anyways, my oldest went to a library conference last month and was given a buy one admission, get another free ticket from a woman that worked at the KVML that was at the conference as well. So that was my birthday present from my oldest kiddo. We headed out early Friday morning, stopped at a place called Rosie’s Place in Noblesville for some brunch, and then hit the museum. It was amazing. So much information about Vonnegut I didn’t know; from his firsthand experience at the Battle of the Bulge to surviving through the bombing of Dresden to his vital relationships with a nanny, his mother, his sister, and his first love and wife. I also learned that Kurt Vonnegut was a massive jazz fan.

On my actual birthday we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Tequila’s. It was us, the kids, my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and my coworker John and his wife Judy. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of going out to eat, mainly because I’m a hermit these days and I don’t like bringing attention to myself. But my wife brought up the idea and I felt like I needed to just step out of my comfort zone a bit since it was my damn 50th birthday. Turns out, it was a pretty fantastic time. The food was excellent and the company even more. It was the perfect dinner. I truly felt special sitting there with the most important people in my life; eating, laughing, having a nice cold beer, and telling stories. It was the perfect 50th birthday celebration.

The last three months have been trying, to say the least. We’ve had to navigate a lot of new territory, and some of that territory wasn’t all that pleasant. But I realize now looking back that we made it through because we all(wife, kids, parents, friends) are here for one another. You don’t truly know how good you’ve got it until you’re in crisis mode and who’s left to help you through it. I’ve come to realize that I’m surrounded by the best of the best, and we’ll get through whatever comes our way. I’ve also realized you can’t do it alone. No matter how much of a hermit I think I am, getting through the good and bad times requires the same people. People that are there for the ups and downs, and I have those kinds of people in spades.

I hope you do, too. And I hope all is well with you and yours. Glad to be back here writing and sharing and maybe even over-sharing.