The Big Four Oh

Recently I turned 40. 40 is just a number, yet it isn't. The first hint was when I received a card from one of my mother's cousins saying she's not old enough for me to be 40 (my cousin, her niece, who is 8 months older than me, told me she received the same card back in September). The second was all the "you're an old man now" greetings I received on the big day, usually from people right around my age, both older and younger. The final hint was at my "surprise" party (I had figured out there was a party) when I received my gag gifts. All the wives seemed to appreciate the night light for the toilet seat lid.

I remember when my parents and their generation turned 40. My godmother had a nervous breakdown. My dad was completely oblivious to the surprise party he was attending (the premise was that it was a get together at a cousin's house who lived near us & when my father told my mom how surprised he was that the cousins knew so many of their friends did my mother ask him who he thought everyone yelled "SURPRISE" to). I suppose 40 is a sobering number as, statistically, I have more yesterdays than tomorrows and, on many surveys, I'm not linked to those "old farts" nearing the half century mark over those cool kids just at the cusp of 30 (ignoring that I probably have more in common with the old farts). More important, about a month ago, I hit the point where I lived more of my life without a father than with a father (my dad died a few weeks before my 20th birthday). Same as how my cousins (of my generation) look around and realize how many of the cousins of our parents' generation are already gone (our mothers were the younger cousins of their generation) and it won't be that many more years where, save for a few, we're going to be the senior generation (my ailing 71 year old mother takes solace that her 86 year old uncle, her father's brother, is still alive and kicking and that there are still a few of that generation hanging on).

However, I don't feel old. I still feel like the child I was, despite that I like to go to bed early, actually had beer expire, have less hair than I used to, can't will myself to lose the weight I used to be able to when I gained some weight, don't like to drink for fun (and have to be really careful what I drink unless I want to feel lousy), have taken various positions of responsibility, such as becoming a board member of our synagogue, and hear my parents voice when I yell at my own children (who seem to have the energy levels I used to have). Unlike my parents, I wear jeans, sneakers, listen to rock music, play video games and other cool things. However, like my parents, I worry about the economic future. However, there is one thing I fear (by fear I mean old, my parents were pretty good people) will turn me into my parents: money.

As a member of Generation X, I was apparently raised in boom times. Boom times? Certainly not in my house or my middle class NYC neighborhood. I can surely remember when money was tight. Not so tight that I didn't get my $2.50 a week allowance (aside from when I was being punished), which kept me well stocked with comic books and baseball cards (wish I had kept those). But tight enough that my parents would study the supermarket fliers when making out the shopping list and buy different items at different supermarkets depending on the price (with a large family, the store savings outweighed the increased gasoline costs our 12 MPG Ford got). Also, as a member of Generation X, I graduated college in 1990: just in time for the first Bush recession, so I have had experience with financial insecurity. So much fun going back to the job you had in high school after college because you need anything to pay the bills; note to Gen Y: if you're forced to do this, be creative on the resume -- taking a job that pays enough to cover your bills, but isn't on your career tract is frowned down upon by some.

My parents hit their 40s in the 1970s, which felt like one long recession in our house. My mother had been a NYC school teacher and had just gone back to work before being laid off. This put an end to our parents plan of buying a house, but we were able to do ok on just my dad's salary for a few years. We weren't rich, but we were far from poor. Our house seemed average, 2 cars, one or two color TVs and other norms of the time. We took annual vacations to Florida to see family, at least until 1979 or so when gas prices rose too high to make that affordable. And after we were older and the hiring freeze had ended, I still remember my dad telling us my mother had to go back to work to help make ends meet. We weren't poor by any means, just not as affluent as we were later in the 1980s. My wife grew up pretty much the same way, though out in the NorthWest.

Anyway, as I reach 40, I feel like the way my parents did; worried about money and the future. Though I'm probably a little more financially stable as I already own my house (well, at least 70% or so, depending on how much my house is worth today -- the rest belongs to the bank), I have the same fears. What will the future bring to me and my children? Though I don't worry about a nuclear bomb ending the world like they probably did, I do worry about what is coming. Will they grow up in a country with reduced expectations, crushed by an inability to break the chains put upon them by previous generations? Will they live in a land where all the good jobs have been exported to other nations and all the previous works left by earlier generations has been exhausted, leaving them destitute? Will they live in a country of reduced freedoms due to political and economic reasons? Or will they live in a country like the one I grew up in because we, as a nation, do what we do best and reinvent our economy and reestablish the freedoms for which many of died for?

Thoughts of a bigger house or an expansion to our current one are on hold for the moment. Fortunately, like my parents, we don't have credit card debt, always paying off our bills in full each month, outside the occasional emergency once or twice for which we drastically cut spending in the ensuing months to get ourselves off the paying interest roller coaster. Additionally, unlike my parents, I will be aging in a country with an economy that will not be as kind to me as to my parents. Both my parents could count on pensions (though he died before retiring, my mother received my father's pension), could health care, social security that led, for my mother before she got too ill, a comfortable retirement. I can look forward to reduced social security and health benefits, a smaller pension, increasing commodity prices, a failing infrastructure and a ton of debt left by those who didn't believe in pay as you go. I could go on, and bash baby boomers, but why bother when others are willing to do so.

But, as I turn 40, I have one real wish: that I'm around in 32 years to see what my eldest child writes on his 40th birthday.

Death is a part of life

In a recent Dear Abby, I read a letter from an ailing grandfather upset that his son and daughter-in-law were trying to keep his grandson away from him because he was dying and they were afraid their grandson would become upset if his now beloved grandfather died (in lieu of a grandfather in name only). What is it with people being afraid of death?

Last year my mother, who has been in declining health for several years, had a stroke. As she recovered it became apparent that she was not going to return to her old self. Mentally she was, and is, still all there, but her body had taken a severe blow. While she was rehabbing we took our children to see her, explaining to our (then) 6 year old that Grandma was in poor physical shape, would have trouble speaking to him, may look a little different etc, but that she wanted to see him. The visit went as well as we could expect. A few days later, we get a call from his teacher saying our son was acting out all of the sudden. We told her about my mother and then she said one of the more hurtful things to me during this ordeal: that maybe it was best if our son didn't visit her.

At the time we didn't know if mom was ready to give up or not or continue to fight to live and the visit meant a lot to her. I explained to the teacher that our family was not a fairy tale with grandma baking cookies etc, that our son has a very sick grandmother and that my mother would probably remain that way for the rest of her life. I'm not sure if my tears, as I explained all this, were from anger or sadness. There is a part of me that wishes our children would have "normal" grandparents, especially when we want to go away for a weekend and are looking for relatives (siblings, cousins our age have children of their own, older relatives have health issues too or are still working) to care for them, but with grandfathers who died young and grandmothers with health issues of their own at young ages, that is not to be. We've come to accept that this was the hand our parents' were dealt and have lived with it.

Sometimes I think I grieve more that my children will not be able to have the same relationships I had my with my grandparents: no grandfather to take them fishing and tell stories of mom and her brother as children, no grandmother who could cook up a storm (in fairness, neither of our mothers were "gourmet" cooks in their prime) or take them to the top of the Empire State Building in the middle of the week because they were retired.

Today, over a year after the stroke, my mother's health is a non-issue. She's had some setbacks, most of which we are able to shield the children from, and can communicate a little better. We see mom at the nursing home on a fairly regular basis and my children accept her condition: our youngest will have no memory of her healthier days, but we have pictures. I'm sure there will be issues when my mom finally does die, but I couldn't imagine keeping my children away from her (aside from when there is illness of course). She needs to know them, they need to know her.

Yes, she'll never be able to tell them stories like my grandparents did, nor go out for a nice family meal at a restaurant (stroke left her unable to chew solids), but my children will have other memories. They will remember drag racing grandma's wheelchair from their tricycle in the nursing home courtyard. They'll remember walks/rolls to the park. The important thing is that they'll remember her and that she won't just be some picture on the wall of a person they did not know.