This week I celebrate that milestone of milestones. My 40th birthday. I was going to consider having a midlife crisis until my uncle faxed me a list of facts from 1908. One of them being that the average life expectancy in 1908 was 47 years. So if I had lived in 1908, I would have gone through my crisis around 17 years ago. And at age 23 I was much too busy with two babies and getting back into my highschool jeans to even consider a midlife crisis.
But if I had lived in 1908, I would only have about 7 years left to go. So I told my husband for my 40th birthday I really need to concentrate on doing everything I ever wanted to do and spend our entire savings within the next seven years. After all, life is short and in 1908 I could have dropped dead in seven years. And we really shouldn’t leave the kids anything when we go. After all, they didn’t earn it. And we had a close friend that died while seriously in debt. Unlike what everybody says about not being able to take it with you, he actually did. That was living life on the edge!
Since I went skiing for the first and only time last year and was Olympic quality after my one lesson, I told him the one thing I needed to do before I die is to feel the wind in my hair while careening down the slopes skiing the Alps. A hard feat to convince my family to do, since my husband has a bad knee and doesn’t ski, my younger son wants to move to the tropics and claims he never ever, ever wants to see a snow covered mountain for the entire rest of his life, and my other two thought the part of skiing that involved uphill was way too much work. Sonny Bono really enjoyed skiing and offered to ski with me next time, but he hasn’t answered his phone in quite awhile.
My husband didn’t really want to spend every last penny we have in the next few years, but understood how much it meant to me to be able to stand with overflowing knowledge in Denmon’s Pharmacy & Ski Outlet while pondering the finer points of ear muffs and wowing the sales staff about the last time I had skied the Alps.
In fact, in 1908 Bossier City only had a population of about 250 people, so just about the entire city could have huddled around the woodstove at the then probable Denmon’s Apothecary and Mitten Mart and I could have broke into the conversation and awed them with how I had just returned from skiing the Double Black Diamond Slope of the Italian Alps....at breakneck speeds....on one leg....while being chased by a bear....To then stab the bear with my rudimentary and historic ski pole and bring him back to the village at the bottom of the mountain where we had a huge bear bar-b-que and danced native Italian dances. And the village tannery turned the bear’s hide into a snazzy fur coat that I brought back home to Bossier to show off in a time before PETA. The local Bossier-ites could then marvel at my warm fur coat and then go back to their conversation around the woodstove on Teddy Roosevelt not running for re-election and whether or not to pull out of Panama.
In spite of telling the family how much it would mean to spend $10,000 on a vacation in the place of my ancestors for a mom now entering her twilight years, they said I would have to give up slicing through the Double Black Diamond run on the slopes of the Matterhorn to have dinner with the family at Diamond Jacks. A phonetically similar substitute. And maybe if I was really sweet for the rest of the winter, I could live it up in the spring at Breckenridge and bring back tales of greatness to tell to the concessions moms at Cope.
I suppose this is what entering the twilight of one’s life involves. Realizing that some things might never happen and while others still might. And I have a few years left to feel the wind in my face on the slopes of the Matterhorn, while hoping that Europe no longer has a bear problem. But the part of fitting back into my high school jeans, might be the real impossible dream.
But on that note, for a 40th birthday, isn’t there cake?
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