Noises

I've been thinking about noises lately.  No, let me rephrase that.  I've been listening to noises lately.  There are a lot of them, a wide range of sounds from soft to loud, harmonious to incongruous, inviting to unpleasant.  But the noises I've been most intent on, the ones that I seem to hear more than any others, are the ones that come from me.  Now before you say to yourself, "Ew, gross," and click over to Facebook to check and see if anyone has commented on your latest post, I am not talking about bodily noises.  Per se.  More about the noises that I utter in response to the aches and pains my now-over 40 year old body has developed in the last several years.  Whoever first uttered the phrase "40 is the new 30" was clearly trying to boost her self-esteem and had no real idea what she was in for.  And she absolutely had not turned 40 yet.

But before I get to the noises, a brief rant about turning 40:

I absolutely remember my parents each turning 40.  I even remember our neighbor turning 40 (but really, I only remember that because there was a pizza with 40 written on it in pepperoni, and I thought that was a really cool idea at the time).  It seemed like such an old age at the time.  Ancient.  If you asked me now, at my present age of 44, to describe to you what my parents looked like when THEY were 40, I would recollect that they looked SO MUCH OLDER at that age than I do now.  And yet when I go back and look at photos of me at thirteen and my parents at 40 and 43 respectively, they in fact look quite young.  Why do I not remember them that way in my mind?  How do my kids see me?

It's funny (not ha ha funny; more ironic funny).  You hear about "turning 40" your whole life, or at least you register it as a huge event from the point that age is of any significance to you.  After the Sweet 16 party, there's not much else of note until you turn 40 (okay, 21 is noteworthy, but truly not many people actually remember that one after the fact, so I'm not counting it).  And then BAM, 40 hits (for all of you that hold at 39, you're not fooling anyone) and all the sudden instead of looking forward to your birthday, you're supposed to dread it.  Instead of asking for the first and biggest slice of your favorite flavor of cake (Lady Lord from the Holiday Snack Bar in Beach Haven, New Jersey thank you very much), you request a thin slice with no ice cream.  Calories getting harder to burn off.  Do you get 40 candles on your cake?  No you do not.  You get either a giant "4" candle and a giant "0" candle, or you get a few candles in the shape of a 40.  Or one symbolic candle.  People wear black armbands to your party.  They buy plates with "Over the Hill" emblazoned in black writing on them for god's sake.  In what I think is the most back-handed compliment-disguised as an insult ever conceived, you all the sudden get compared to fine bottles of wine.

What's so terrible about turning 40, I always wondered before I turned 40 (ok, that's not entirely true--I thought turning 40 meant the end of youth and fun and freedom up until I was about 34; then, when faced with the prospect of turning 40 in the not-so-distant future, I conveniently started wondering what the big deal would be, as I clearly would be the youngest-seeming/looking 40 year old EVER).  What's the big deal?  It's a number.  It doesn't define you.  It's not like some anti-Peter-Pan fairy swoops down on you at 40 and sprinkles you with "now you're old" dust.

I mocked people who were afraid of 40.  I mocked people who were over 40 and talked about it like it was some sort of life-altering change.

Until I actually turned 40.  Okay, I get it now.

As it turns out, there may be some correlation between that "over the hill" thing and 40.

Things began to happen.  Not giant things.  And not all at once.  But little things.  My shoulder all the sudden began to hurt, and I couldn't move it a certain way.  My back ached a bit when I got up in the morning.  My running pace slowed down (see previous blog to get the full impact of just how slow I now must be going).  It got harder to lose a pound or two.  My right knee began to hurt if I ran more than seven miles (lucky for me, this didn't occur too terribly often).  I had trouble getting to sleep some nights.  I began to think that 2pm naps sounded like an idea whose time had arrived.  I couldn't hear as well.  I began talking to myself--out loud ("Okay, keys, I know you're here. If I were my keys, where would I be? Got back from the store, put away the groceries... hmmm... walked over to the sink...").  You get the idea.

All the sudden, I felt old.  Not older, just plain old.

Which brings me back to the noises.

When I get up in the morning, I make this "uuuhhh" noise as I get out of bed because my back is so stiff.
When I bend down to pick up the wet towel that has been left on my daughter's floor (that's a whole other blog, by the way, soon to come) an audible groan escapes me.
When I get up off the couch, I have been known to say something akin to "oofff".
Still talking to myself, still out loud.

There's a whole list of maladies and noises that I am compiling.  And all of them have developed in the last couple of years, since I turned 40.

So I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to my parents.

I'm sorry, Mom, that I could not understand why you liked to take a nap in the afternoons when I was a teenager, and that I thought it wasn't fair that when we went camping you got to have a cot or a pad under your sleeping bag while the rest of us slept on the ground.  A sore back (likely brought on by doing so many things for all of us, for which we probably never said proper thank you's), I now understand, requires special pampering.
I'm sorry, Dad, that we (and by we, I'm implicating both my brothers) thought it was funny that you could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, and occasionally we might have tried to wake you up to amuse ourselves.  I truly wish I had that talent now--falling asleep anywhere, anytime.  Being able to get good sleep makes for a happy, content person, which you always were and still are.  And even though we (again, implicating the siblings) poked fun at you not hearing what was going on around you, I think that two out of three of us REALLY understand that situation at this point in our lives. Thanks for always being such a great sport.

I get it now.  I really do.  And lest I forget to note them, there are certainly some upsides to being in my 40's.  I have finally learned how to take ibuprofen for maximum effectiveness (thank you, honey, for your patience with that one--sooner or later I'll actually follow through).  I have thighs of steel (from bending at the knees to save my back).  My kids are now old enough to do some of the literal heavy lifting that I can no longer do because it hurts my back.  My son will very soon be old enough to do some of the chauffeuring duties--he will be able to drive himself to school, pick up his sister, take her to dance class, whiz by the store for some ingredient I forgot for dinner, and pick up milkshakes late at night when we all get a sweet tooth.  And of course I can't forget that amidst all the aches and pains and noises, there's not much I truly cannot do, so I'm grateful for that.

I'm using my new-found understanding of this decade of my life to look forward, to anticipate the realities (read: pains) and joys of turning 50.  I'm ready to embrace the AARP, the senior discount, medicaid (if it's still around) and the early-bird special.

And, I recently heard that 50 is the new 40, so I'll have that going for me!