On Being 48 and Crying a Lot

A completely free diatribe on commercials, John Green, and growing older and emotional

I turned 48 three months ago and for some reason now I feel old. I didn’t feel this way when I turned 47 or 46 or 45. I might have felt this way at 40 but that was a long time ago and I can’t remember. Only 21 months until I turn 50. It’s exciting and alarming and adventurous. Who knows what awaits.

Feeling old has made me emo about everything…I hug my kids so much now they look at me like I’m a stranger trying to give them candy. I give them all big kisses on the cheek, even my older kids, even and especially my boys, which really makes me feel old because they have stubble now. How do these things happen? When I think about how our older two will soon be out of the house, I feel so so excited for them and how their lives are opening up, but I also feel blue.

Feeling old has gotten me back out and running on the roads again, because I want to be able to run when I’m in my 60s and 70s and I figure if I wait until then to start, that won’t end well. So I put on warm clothes (because I hate to get cold when I run) and I run for miles on the hills around our neighborhood, through the private golf course where all the old guys are playing golf, down to the off-leash area where other old people are walking their dogs in the middle of the day.

But most of this emotion was going on under the surface until I was in the shower the other day and read two simple words on one of the kids’ shampoo bottles: Tear-Free. This made me unreasonably furious, which is always a first step towards sadness. Because first of all what does “tear-free” even mean and second of all stop trying to spin every. single. thing. into a sales situation. Even shampoo, in the privacy of my shower. I started seeing how nearly every object in my house still has remnants of “the sale” on it, endorsements on the covers or boxes or brand names or symbols. We are completely inundated by sales tactics.

Tear-free? Do you mean the shampoo doesn’t have any tears in it? Of course not. You mean it won’t make me cry if I get it in my eyes. It just sounds like a made-up thing.

I know this is ridiculous.

I know I am being ridiculous.

Later that night I almost had to stop watching Survivor because the commercials were suddenly so overwhelming; it was like my eyes were opened to how every person and company wants us for our money, that’s it, just one constant sales job, commercial after commercial, jingle after jingle (my younger two walk around the house singing ((“Liberty, liberty, liiiberty…liiiberty”)). I felt like everyone was shouting at me to buy buy buy and I don’t even have that much discretionary income right now so knock it off and leave me alone!

Then I felt really old because I’m pretty sure only old people get grumpy about commercials.

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Continuing my streak of old and emo, this popped up in one of my various timelines (scrolling does not help with the commercial-rage I’ve been feeling, but anyway, in this case it led to something beautiful):

I read that short excerpt from the Appendix of Lord of the Rings and tears formed in my eyes. I could have put my forehead down on my typing pad (that’s what keeps us old people from developing carpal tunnel) and wept.

If you’ve never read Lord of the Rings you can skip this part because it will probably mean nothing to you, but if you, like me, read it for the first time in 7th grade and then re-read it multiple more times over the following summers and carried the books with you through all of middle school and then read Lord of the Rings in its entirety every Christmas from 2000 through 2005, you’ll understand.

This incredible fellowship was formed to save the world, a fellowship of nine to match the nine Dark Riders, but not all of the Fellowship were powerful or famous or the kind of folks you’d normally send on such an important mission. The dwarf and the elf hated each other at first. Gandalf would die. The two men were sorely tempted by the Ring of Power. (Pretty sure only old people use the word “sorely” as an adjective before “tempted”.)

Four of them were lowly hobbits, two of whom are written about in the Appendix above. They lived long lives of adventure and friendship, and in the end “their beds were set beside the bed of the great king.”

I thought of all they had been through in the book, but I also thought of all that Tolkien had been through with his friends in World War I, in real life. And when I read those words, I cried.

“And when that ship passed an end was come in the Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring.”

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Speaking of a fellowship, and growing old together, we went with our friends John and Kim to see author John Green talk about his new book, Everything is Tuberculosis. (I would include a Bookshop.org link here so you could buy it in a way that benefitted our little book shop, Nooks, but that just feels like more commercials.) We’re all in the latter half of our forties, and we’ve been friends for fifteen years—went through a long homeschooling phase together, then kids in school while we ran our own businesses, and now kids flying the coop and leaving us behind. Getting tattoos. Significant others. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been to Mordor and back together.

Green shared stories from his book about doctors he knows working on the TB problem and people he met overseas who have died from this curable disease. 1.25 million people die from TB every year, and we have a cure, but not the give-a-damn to dedicate the required resources to eradicated it. In other words, as a collective cultural system, which includes you and me, we don’t think people overseas deserve to have the cure.

He was so honest about his fears and anxieties for the world, but also full of hope and silliness and belief that humans can be deeply, deeply good. It was not a tear-free evening.

I’m realizing that part of the reason for this emotional phase that I’m in is that I’m allowing my heart to open. It just feels like I love more than I used to. This is not a tear-free undertaking.

Afterwards we stood with our friends under the overhang outside Marian Hall and talked. It was raining in Philadelphia. Taxis darted in and out of traffic while people ran here and there, laughing at getting wet, shivering against the cold. The lights were bright, and we said good-bye, and then it was just Maile and I running through the rain, a cold rain that fell on our heads and our faces and streaked my glasses and ran down my face like tears.