Mid-life crisis? HA! I say again, HA! I laugh in your face!

Golly! Wouldn't you think that my family has had enough sickness this year? Apparantly our cup still has some room in it because three of us have colds. Cyndi and I each have pussy green goo coming out of our eyes. (WOW! Never experienced that before. Yuck!) Thankfully, Basil is spared that disgusting symptom. Basil was the first to get sick on Monday. I started feeling poorly on Tuesday. Cyndi on Wednesday. I think Basil and I are over the worst of it. But the cough and stuffy nose linger. The headache was miserable.

I bring this up not so much to make you all feel sorry for us (Did i mention that I broke a tooth, too?) but to write a little about getting older. (My health makes me think a lot about getting older.)

I'll be 40 next February. I always thought I would like being 40. Seriously. Even when I was 14 my favorite outfit was grey flannel slacks, a white shirt, a navy blazer, and a conservative tie. When I was 20 used to think of 40 as my dream age. I figured by 40 I'd be established in a career, have 2 grown sons, a house (full of American Empire furniture, Art Deco accents, and with my yet to be bought collection of Wedgwood jasperware plates on one wall.) 1/2 paid for, and vacations in places such as Venice, London, Barcelona, New York, Hong Kong, etc., have one or two books published, have a couple of graduate degrees. And I thought I would always be hale and hearty. That was my fantasy when I was 20. I was a slightly odd 20 year old.

Now I am 39, and what I am noticing is that I am a very long way away from that fantasy 40-year old I thought I would be. Iam actually farther away from that 40 year old now than I was when I was 20. I have achieved none of the stuff I thought I would, and none of it seems likely. Well, I do have two grown sons. I love them very much and am very proud of them but they do not talk to me. (God hates divorce for a reason, you know?) I suppose that isn't just a zero, but is a negative value, huh?

But I have three things that I never expected, and those three things more than make up for all the things that 20-year old wanted but never got. (And of course, I realize about 1/4 of 20 year olds who were alive with me when I was 20 are dead now. It is probable that they never got what they wanted either.)

The first thing is the Orthodox Christian faith. It is not possible for me to describe how happy it makes me to have all the different threads that I thought were true tied up in one beautiful rope. The second thing is a wife I can trust and who loves me. As late as 32 I had doubts about ever having that. The third thing is two little boys to watch grow up. This last is almost more fun than a man can handle. Some of the things they say and do just about make me burst open with happiness. I have vast amounts of beauty and love in my life, and that seems to be better than the things I wanted when I was 20.

But I'd still rather not have pussy green slime coming out of my eye. And a an American Empire highboy could certaily be put to good use.