Now

As you know from my last post ~ 40 Things I Learned While 40 ~ I am now 41 and as of Monday, so is my husband.  (I love that I can say I married a younger man.) I wonder what he would list as his 40 things he learned while 40? Sounds like a good question for our next date night. Hopefully that will happen before we are both 42!

Back on my birthday, while the hint of summer was still heavy in the air, we took our coffee and two chairs to the beach just down the road.  There we sat, ignoring the to-do lists and pressing demands of his work, and remembered what we are really celebrating with each passing year  ~  our personal relationships.  Without relationships our work would be meaningless, our to-do lists pointless drudgery. We held hands and watched the birds sailing high then streaking downward in search of their own breakfast.  The sun climbed before us and the still calm water gleamed in pink and silver tones.

We talked about the past 20 years together.  The first birthday we celebrated as a couple was my 21st (it was staggeringly uneventful). How amazing to know that from here on, the time we have been together will outweigh the time we lived apart. We discussed the fact that when we began dating, our parents were only 50 years old.  How could we be only nine years from there ourselves? We still feel so young inside, as if the suits he puts on for work are still a form of playing dress-up.  The mini-van I drive is so much hipper in my imagination than it must appear to others on the road.

While being 40 today is much younger than it was just 20 years ago, it still resonates as a tipping point in an individual's life.  Is this the half-way mark?  The question hangs unspoken between us but there is a renewed stirring of life at the thought. If this is the mid-point of my life, how can I pack all that I have yet to do, see, feel, eat, create into the suddenly short remainder of my days?

But then again, there is no urgency. There is only now. There is only this little crab making eye contact with me on the diamond dusted sand. There is only my hand in my husband's, held more lovingly than ever because of the years and tears and multitudes of nows.