THIS IS 40

Entering my flamingo era.

Over the hill.
I loathe the phrase.
While growing up, my dad was the first person that I recall having a 40th birthday experience. The pink flamingos on the lawn on the morning of. My third grade teacher, Mrs. White poking fun at him for being over the hill. It was quite the spectacle.

Over the hill.
Sledding comes to mind. The trek up a snowy hill with sled in hand takes an eternity, but once you get to the top, it’s only a matter of seconds to slide down. “Middle age” they call it. I vaguely recall some history about what went down in the Middles Ages and it mostly involved death. My grandpa was the first person in my life that passed away- I was 6 years old and he was around the age of 65. As I grew older, this became my marker for life expectancy. With that logic, 40 was quite literally over the hill on the timeline until death. Little did I know that the average male life expectancy has grown to 80.3 years– thank you, science!

To contrast flamingos, around the time of my dad’s 40th birthday, party supply stores were also stocking vultures as an alternative. 40 was the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, I was indoctrinated at a young age that in the Bible that every time the number 40 came up that bad things would happen: rain would flood the earth for 40 days while Noah sipped a daiquiri and the rest of the world drowned. A civilization wandered aimlessly in a desert for 40 years, struggling to live. Death is inevitable, this is true– but, 40 felt like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was pointing a bony finger at my grave.

I’ve been so afraid of dying that I was forgetting how to live.

Someone once called me an “elder millennial” and I look to others in my age bracket– mostly younger than me– who are more terrified of turning 40 than I have been. Sharing memes about their back pain, the dread of waking up every morning to repeat the cycle of “adulting”, and yearning for the nostalgia of childhood in ways that would best be unpacked in therapy. But… I can’t really relate.
Except for the nostalgia, but that’s just called having a hobby ;)

One also cannot forget the infamous episode of FRIENDS where Joey turning 30 was devastation incarnate. A looping segment of him wailing: “Why God? WHYYYY!?” And if 30 was portrayed to create a culture of demise, surely 40 was that much worse, right?

As I write this on the eve of my 40th trip around the Sun, I’m filled with optimism.
I’m going to live for a long time and not only plan to make it until at least 92, but really live. I want to see how many books I can write, how many art gallery showings I can have, where I can travel to sample different roasts of coffee, and foster friendships old and new. I want the Spice Girls to have a reunion tour and spend an absurd amount of money to see them live. I want to cover my body with tattoos and when I make it to 92 and my skin is wrinkly and worn, to look back on each one as a walking journal of where I’ve been. I want to see how my family has grown– new faces to appear and to enjoy relationships with unimaginable depth and love. I want to see how hard I’m going to love in this next chapter of life– starting with myself.

In January, I often choose a word as a guidepost for the year to come. The universe gifted two this year and both kept popping up randomly over and over.
The first is ascension: what it means to rise. What it means to grow wings and fly.
The second is audacity. Audacity to unashamedly be myself and in life’s pursuits (I borrowed that word from Cynthia Erivo- she’s got my back). With sheer audacity, I even created a registry for birthday gifts- something that previously would have mortified me. Learning to not resist when people want to love and celebrate me and to embrace it is a form of self love as well. Why do we often fight joy when we’re starving for it?

Circling back to that party store when I was 9 years old, there were two options present: a flamingo and a vulture.
Well, fuck the vulture, I’m jumping into my flamingo era.

A group of flamingos is called a “flamboyance” and what’s next in life being 40 is going to be flocking fabulous.