My parents turned 40 within a month of each other. My dad went first, and since I had just enough sense of humor to be dangerous at 10 years old, I made him a birthday card that illustrated the figurative expression "over the hill". It was new to me and seemed to tickle the shit out of grown ups, so like every junior-nerd-in-training, I sought to exploit every possible opportunity to make adults laugh. The illustration inside the card depicted a cartoon voyage up a literal hill, beginning with an infant in baby carriage at the base of a 90-degree incline, trailing just behind a child in a wagon. In ascending order was another cart with a teenage boy, and then another with a young man, progressing farther up the hill to a sharp peak. There, all the subsequent carts and their incrementally aging riders began careening down the alternate face of the cliff that ended with a feeble husk of an elderly man shuffling behind a walker into eternity. My dad chuckled when he received it--but most likely cried himself to sleep that night from the suffocating-ly apocalyptic imagery I had reduced his golden years into...nevertheless, the initial feigned laughter was enough for me! My mom got one too a month later--along with every other aunt, uncle, or family friend that had the misfortune to turn 40 within the next 2-3 years. Because, like so many other kids erroneously believe, I felt all jokes were funniest when beaten to a bloody pulp.
Much like that phase of your life when everyone seems to be getting married and there's a wedding nearly every weekend, I've now entered the era where everyone is turning 40. Most recently, it was Ray. When his parents happened to use the phrase "over the hill" in reference to his upcoming birthday in front of the kids, the 5-year-old was curious. So, naturally, I--incapable of resisting both a teachable moment and the impulse to reinvigorate my tired, obnoxious cartoon--sketched a personalized reboot of my ubiquitous "over the hill" card that my sons could sign in recognition of the big day. Ray was a good sport, but I don't think jokes about the inevitability of your own mortality are nearly as funny when you're an actual adult, with full comprehension of exactly how fleeting the carnival ride is. Instead of lurching behind a walker, I showed Ray floating into eternity in an over-sized inner tube wearing board shorts and sunglasses--but whether you envision yourself crashing into a mushroom cloud of hellfire or coasting into an after-life after-party at the eternal Sandals Resort, I can see how 40 can be a real gut-check of where you've been and where you're headed.
This month, it's my sister Marie’s turn. Throughout our history, there have been a string of highly anticipated birthdays she would get to before me: 16...18...21. Can't say I've been super jealous lately of that 2-and-a-half-year head start she's got on me...but I know better than to joke too hard about the apex of that same hill that's fast approaching on my own horizon.
Marie brought her family to visit from New England last month, and between us, and we have now have 4 boys, ages 5, 4, 3, and 2--which, when you list their ages in descending order like that, sounds kinda like the countdown on a ticking time bomb. Fortunately for us, our offspring, and our spouses, it all went surprisingly well. Personalities meshed, and the otherwise oppressive heat of North Carolina August was virtually imperceptible to the kids, whom we immersed in the neighborhood pool at regular intervals. At the waning end of her visit, we ventured to a local mall's indoor playground to bask in the air-conditioning of what amounted to a subtly-cushioned wrestling ring, lined with inward facing vinyl booths for parental on-lookers at the base of the JC Penney. Once that part of the outing had run its course, we embarked on a reconnaissance mission into the depths of JC Penney-proper as a short-term diversion before lunch. On this particular day, Ray was at work and Uncle Joe, Marie’s husband, was elsewhere in the mall on his own separate search for shirts made of whatever space-age fabric was needed to endure the heat-of-a-thousand-suns that had comprised our local climate for the week of his stay. So, for the moment, it was just Marie and me.
We paraded through the fragrance section like two parts of a broken human chain, each mom grasping at the limbs of her two young boys, who intermittently detached themselves just far enough from the group, milling about the mommies like a small herd of feral cats. In our search for the boys’ department, we came across the inevitable escalator, which every parent recognizes as THE main attraction of any public place in the eyes of all children under the age of 10. This fact was immortalized in the movie Mall Rats, a cult-classic Kevin Smith comedy about the standard cast of characters that occupy any mall-like space--which, naturally, includes a child riding inappropriately on the escalator. “That kid is back on the escalator again!” is a line from the movie that, for Ray and me, has become a euphemism for any situation that keeps recurring, despite any attempted deterrents or redirection to the contrary.
For young kids, the world is FULL of “escalators”, both literal and figurative. For instance,we ultimately removed all the rubber doorstops from the walls in our house for the first 3 years of having children, simply because we could not keep either kid from playing with them until they fell the fuck off anyway. Be it extension cords, light sockets, or actual escalators, no amount of inhibitory feedback can keep kids from the gravitational pull of “toys” that were never meant to be toys. So here we were, Marie and I, wandering the mall, outnumbered by children, when an escalator appeared. Not knowing where exactly the boys’ section was, we were willing to indulge the kids’ overwhelming desire and carefully mounted the moving staircase en masse. “Does it seem like it’s going a little fast to you?” we asked each other, having scrambled a little more than the usual sense of urgency demands when escorting young children on to an escalator. There was a tense moment or two getting everybody off at the end--but we assured ourselves that bit of chaos was par for the course when exiting an escalator as a family. We scanned the second floor just long enough to confirm the boys’ section must, in fact, be downstairs, and then turned to ride the escalator back down.
What had seemed “a little fast” on the way up was two notches above “warp” on the way down--to the point that both adults and all 4 kids formed a frightened bottleneck at the top of the stairs, Marie and I trying to brace ourselves against the moving rails while our children alternated between trying to leap forward and clinging to our legs in fear when they realized their step had instantly disappeared, threatening to take their toes with it. It was like the turbulence scene in Almost Famous, where their plane goes into free-fall and everyone loses their shit--crying and screaming and making last-minute confessions. Yep. That was us. Or at least it felt like it in the 15-20 seconds between our initial collective panic and the moment when Marie and I pressed forward, desperately yanking our kids off the ground by their chubby little hands and leaping blindly onto the moving stairs, much like I’d imagine we’d do if forced to jump to safety from the second-story window of a blazing inferno. Once we’d all safely disembarked from the Escalator of Death on the ground floor of JC Penney with all our limbs intact, Marie and I briefly reflected on this OH MY GOD moment, the kind moms so often experience by themselves in any range of unfortunate circumstances that seem to arise when flying solo with your children--like squeezing a cart full of food into the grocery store restroom because the older child needs to take a shit and the younger child cannot be contained any other way but strapped into the shopping cart. Or having to conduct an emergency evacuation of your Boston apartment in the dead of winter with a toddler and a newborn, when the sidewalks are a sheet of black ice and the outdoor air temperature requires that you encase all young children in a down cocoon that takes roughly 20 minutes to stuff your kids into.
Once childless, carefree individuals, Marie and I now regularly compare our daydreamed rehearsals of nightmare scenarios--like how to unbuckle two child safety seats simultaneously in the event the car is overturned and sinking in roadside body of water. Having lived in different states for many years now, however, this was our first opportunity to experience a kid-crisis together in real-time. This episode would likely become a family classic, told and retold over and over throughout the oncoming decades, about the time the sisters and cousins were nearly sucked to our deaths between the interlocking teeth of that rapidly receding escalator in JC Penney.
In the process of reflecting on Marie’s milestone birthday, it recently occurred to me that our nearly tragic episode on the escalator was a real-life version of my “over the hill” drawings. At this moment in time, Marie and I are both standing on the 2nd floor in the department store of life, looking down on a series of steps descending with supernatural speed. And looking back on the steps we took to get here, it seems like those, too, came and went at break-neck pace. Chronologically speaking, Marie will be the first to cross the threshold of metaphorical “descent”--but unlike when we were little, when a year was an impressive fraction of our lives, the two-and-a-half years until I follow her onto the “down” side of that escalator might as well be 2 seconds.
And sure. It’s a little scary. We’re both fully formed adults now with all the knowledge and experience acquired from 4 decades of good times and bad. We know it won’t all be champagne and roses ahead, but the moving stairwell that got us here was not without its rusty hinges, missing steps, and giant metal snaggle-teeth snapping at our shoelaces. We both still managed to gather so much love, laughter, and lingering happiness on our way up, it’s ridiculous to assume that all good fortune expires the second we cross over that hump into the next phase of our adulthood.
So, let it not be our age that defines us, but the richness of the years we accumulate to achieve that number. May we both jump fearlessly onto that descending staircase, and during those heavy moments when the speed of the decline seems unnaturally fast, may we throw our arms up and make a roller coaster out of that shit. Because as our late-cheerleading coach used to say, “Attitude is altitude”. And when life gives you a rapid run-away escalator, turn that JC Penney into Six Flags and try your best to enjoy the ride.
Much like that phase of your life when everyone seems to be getting married and there's a wedding nearly every weekend, I've now entered the era where everyone is turning 40. Most recently, it was Ray. When his parents happened to use the phrase "over the hill" in reference to his upcoming birthday in front of the kids, the 5-year-old was curious. So, naturally, I--incapable of resisting both a teachable moment and the impulse to reinvigorate my tired, obnoxious cartoon--sketched a personalized reboot of my ubiquitous "over the hill" card that my sons could sign in recognition of the big day. Ray was a good sport, but I don't think jokes about the inevitability of your own mortality are nearly as funny when you're an actual adult, with full comprehension of exactly how fleeting the carnival ride is. Instead of lurching behind a walker, I showed Ray floating into eternity in an over-sized inner tube wearing board shorts and sunglasses--but whether you envision yourself crashing into a mushroom cloud of hellfire or coasting into an after-life after-party at the eternal Sandals Resort, I can see how 40 can be a real gut-check of where you've been and where you're headed.
This month, it's my sister Marie’s turn. Throughout our history, there have been a string of highly anticipated birthdays she would get to before me: 16...18...21. Can't say I've been super jealous lately of that 2-and-a-half-year head start she's got on me...but I know better than to joke too hard about the apex of that same hill that's fast approaching on my own horizon.
Marie brought her family to visit from New England last month, and between us, and we have now have 4 boys, ages 5, 4, 3, and 2--which, when you list their ages in descending order like that, sounds kinda like the countdown on a ticking time bomb. Fortunately for us, our offspring, and our spouses, it all went surprisingly well. Personalities meshed, and the otherwise oppressive heat of North Carolina August was virtually imperceptible to the kids, whom we immersed in the neighborhood pool at regular intervals. At the waning end of her visit, we ventured to a local mall's indoor playground to bask in the air-conditioning of what amounted to a subtly-cushioned wrestling ring, lined with inward facing vinyl booths for parental on-lookers at the base of the JC Penney. Once that part of the outing had run its course, we embarked on a reconnaissance mission into the depths of JC Penney-proper as a short-term diversion before lunch. On this particular day, Ray was at work and Uncle Joe, Marie’s husband, was elsewhere in the mall on his own separate search for shirts made of whatever space-age fabric was needed to endure the heat-of-a-thousand-suns that had comprised our local climate for the week of his stay. So, for the moment, it was just Marie and me.
We paraded through the fragrance section like two parts of a broken human chain, each mom grasping at the limbs of her two young boys, who intermittently detached themselves just far enough from the group, milling about the mommies like a small herd of feral cats. In our search for the boys’ department, we came across the inevitable escalator, which every parent recognizes as THE main attraction of any public place in the eyes of all children under the age of 10. This fact was immortalized in the movie Mall Rats, a cult-classic Kevin Smith comedy about the standard cast of characters that occupy any mall-like space--which, naturally, includes a child riding inappropriately on the escalator. “That kid is back on the escalator again!” is a line from the movie that, for Ray and me, has become a euphemism for any situation that keeps recurring, despite any attempted deterrents or redirection to the contrary.
For young kids, the world is FULL of “escalators”, both literal and figurative. For instance,we ultimately removed all the rubber doorstops from the walls in our house for the first 3 years of having children, simply because we could not keep either kid from playing with them until they fell the fuck off anyway. Be it extension cords, light sockets, or actual escalators, no amount of inhibitory feedback can keep kids from the gravitational pull of “toys” that were never meant to be toys. So here we were, Marie and I, wandering the mall, outnumbered by children, when an escalator appeared. Not knowing where exactly the boys’ section was, we were willing to indulge the kids’ overwhelming desire and carefully mounted the moving staircase en masse. “Does it seem like it’s going a little fast to you?” we asked each other, having scrambled a little more than the usual sense of urgency demands when escorting young children on to an escalator. There was a tense moment or two getting everybody off at the end--but we assured ourselves that bit of chaos was par for the course when exiting an escalator as a family. We scanned the second floor just long enough to confirm the boys’ section must, in fact, be downstairs, and then turned to ride the escalator back down.
What had seemed “a little fast” on the way up was two notches above “warp” on the way down--to the point that both adults and all 4 kids formed a frightened bottleneck at the top of the stairs, Marie and I trying to brace ourselves against the moving rails while our children alternated between trying to leap forward and clinging to our legs in fear when they realized their step had instantly disappeared, threatening to take their toes with it. It was like the turbulence scene in Almost Famous, where their plane goes into free-fall and everyone loses their shit--crying and screaming and making last-minute confessions. Yep. That was us. Or at least it felt like it in the 15-20 seconds between our initial collective panic and the moment when Marie and I pressed forward, desperately yanking our kids off the ground by their chubby little hands and leaping blindly onto the moving stairs, much like I’d imagine we’d do if forced to jump to safety from the second-story window of a blazing inferno. Once we’d all safely disembarked from the Escalator of Death on the ground floor of JC Penney with all our limbs intact, Marie and I briefly reflected on this OH MY GOD moment, the kind moms so often experience by themselves in any range of unfortunate circumstances that seem to arise when flying solo with your children--like squeezing a cart full of food into the grocery store restroom because the older child needs to take a shit and the younger child cannot be contained any other way but strapped into the shopping cart. Or having to conduct an emergency evacuation of your Boston apartment in the dead of winter with a toddler and a newborn, when the sidewalks are a sheet of black ice and the outdoor air temperature requires that you encase all young children in a down cocoon that takes roughly 20 minutes to stuff your kids into.
Once childless, carefree individuals, Marie and I now regularly compare our daydreamed rehearsals of nightmare scenarios--like how to unbuckle two child safety seats simultaneously in the event the car is overturned and sinking in roadside body of water. Having lived in different states for many years now, however, this was our first opportunity to experience a kid-crisis together in real-time. This episode would likely become a family classic, told and retold over and over throughout the oncoming decades, about the time the sisters and cousins were nearly sucked to our deaths between the interlocking teeth of that rapidly receding escalator in JC Penney.
In the process of reflecting on Marie’s milestone birthday, it recently occurred to me that our nearly tragic episode on the escalator was a real-life version of my “over the hill” drawings. At this moment in time, Marie and I are both standing on the 2nd floor in the department store of life, looking down on a series of steps descending with supernatural speed. And looking back on the steps we took to get here, it seems like those, too, came and went at break-neck pace. Chronologically speaking, Marie will be the first to cross the threshold of metaphorical “descent”--but unlike when we were little, when a year was an impressive fraction of our lives, the two-and-a-half years until I follow her onto the “down” side of that escalator might as well be 2 seconds.
And sure. It’s a little scary. We’re both fully formed adults now with all the knowledge and experience acquired from 4 decades of good times and bad. We know it won’t all be champagne and roses ahead, but the moving stairwell that got us here was not without its rusty hinges, missing steps, and giant metal snaggle-teeth snapping at our shoelaces. We both still managed to gather so much love, laughter, and lingering happiness on our way up, it’s ridiculous to assume that all good fortune expires the second we cross over that hump into the next phase of our adulthood.
So, let it not be our age that defines us, but the richness of the years we accumulate to achieve that number. May we both jump fearlessly onto that descending staircase, and during those heavy moments when the speed of the decline seems unnaturally fast, may we throw our arms up and make a roller coaster out of that shit. Because as our late-cheerleading coach used to say, “Attitude is altitude”. And when life gives you a rapid run-away escalator, turn that JC Penney into Six Flags and try your best to enjoy the ride.
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