Time Waits For No One

I turn 51 today. December 2nd, 2024.

Going in to 50 last year I felt perfectly fine with it. I honestly feel like I truly came into my own when I turned 40. Sure, my body started the old breakdown with worn out joints, snap crackle pop sounds every time I went up stairs(or got out of a chair), and the dome kept losing hair. But I was fine with all of that. I welcomed it(well maybe not the joint pain.)

I’ve always felt a little awkward and old, even in my teens and 20s. Then my 30s hit and it was like this push/pull of I’m still young and need to make my mark in this world while being married and raising three little kids; while on the other side of the coin I just wanted to be comfortable in my skin, warts and all. Not worry about what others thought or feel like I needed to be something I’m not, or ever would be.

When I turned 40 it was like a weight was lifted and I felt like me on the outside finally caught up with the me on the inside. I truly embraced home and being a dad and resigned to the fact that I was the provider for a family, and that making music when I had time was perfectly fine. Locking into to being a family man was the most important thing at that time. Not that I didn’t feel it was important from the get go, but just being comfortable in middle age ran that idea home even more. I had my wife, my kids, a dog named Otto, and a growing collection of vinyl to keep me company. Plus, I had this site to talk and throw ideas out into the ether with.

So when I reached 50 last year it just felt like another step into growing middle age and, well, it was good. I’m not sure why I’m having a hard time turning 51, though. Maybe it’s just more where things are at right now in my life, and not so much the fear of getting older. Kids older now, moving on. Saturday I thought my dog was on his way out. He was whistling through his nose like he was all stuffed up. I thought it was his heart or something. Thought this was it. But Friday I started giving him a different joint pain pill. I wondered if he was having an allergic reaction to it so I put the pills away. He’d had one Friday night and one Saturday morning. I started giving him Benadryl and by Sunday the whistling stopped.

He seemed back to his old, old, old self. He’s still 14 and has a vet appt in a couple weeks, so we don’t know what’s going to happen then. But Saturday took a lot out of me.

Then Sunday my oldest came to visit with their girlfriend. It was really nice seeing them both. I don’t think I’ve seen my oldest since probably October. We had a nice visit. Then my son’s girlfriend was looking through our oldest’s baby book. I stood there while she was looking at the pages, saying what grandma or aunt or cousin was in the picture with that red-headed baby that was sitting in the living room just a few feet away, at 24 years old. An adult, living on their own three hours away. All those grandmas, long gone now. Everyone looked so much younger.

Something hit as I was standing there and I got a little woozy. I walked off to the bathroom and just felt this flood of emotions hit me. The feeling subsided and I went back out and was okay. Then after everyone left I told my wife what happened and my voice got thick and congested and I just broke down. It felt like it had been building for two years, those tears. Between the year we had with our one daughter and all her growing pains and helping her through an extremely rough patch -as well as my other two kids doing their thing and spending a lot of days and evenings alone with my aging dog- all these reminders of time passing and getting old just hit me like an emotional ton of bricks.

I’m not sure I’m done yet, but it felt like some pressure was released.

The last time I remember a birthday being this heavy was my 28th birthday. We’d found out that our pregnancy was more than likely going to be a miscarriage. The doc had told us to go home right before Thanksgiving and we’d give it a couple weeks. I think he already knew that it was a blighted ovum, or an anembryonic pregnancy. I don’t think he wanted to completely ruin the holiday giving us that news, so he sent us home with false hope things might be different when we’d come back. Between Thanksgiving, a cousin’s wedding, and then my birthday we had this massive black cloud hanging over us. I had zero hope that things would be different, but we stuck it out just the same.

These situations were completely different, I absolutely admit. But that ping in my gut and chest is the same in both cases. Then, I was mourning what wouldn’t be. Now, I guess I’m mourning what was and that it’s gone forever. Being a dad to little kids, a dog that saw us through the most important years of our family, and just an overall hurt from growing pains, both emotional and physical.

Hey, sorry for being such a Debbie Downer. Things will change, mindsets will change, and I’ll enter some new phase of this thing called middle age. But for right now, I’m just feeling a lot.