Turning 40: Crossing The Road <back to Poetry & Essays main page

I thought we were going to dinner with friends. I was happily and blindly oblivious to the swirl of phone calls, errands and strange looks on the faces of my friend. So when we pulled up to my friend Nick's art studio, located on the third floor of an old brick cigar factory in a not-so-picturesque district of Tampa, I thought we were simply picking up Nick and his friend and heading off to dinner in the hot, stultifying soup that passes for air in mid-August Florida. It would've worked for me.

Then I opened the door to his art and music studio. “Surprise!” The chorus of voices rang out. I adjusted my ears, then my eyes. I looked around, bewildered, even lost. Where was I? Was this the place with the black grand piano, brick walls, old theatre curtains, stunning portrait of a man playing saxophone in a sea of blue smoke …

“Surprise! Happy Birthday!” The voices grew louder, the smiles bigger. Any dentist in the world would have dreamed to see a patient's mouth as open as mine. I was in a daze, a disbelieving stupor. How did this one get pulled over my eyes?

One by one, the 40 or so people greeted me. Most were dressed like the middle-aged hippies that half of them truly were. The last place I'd seen so much tie-dye, mini-skirts, braided locks, outrageously painted eyebrows and bell-bottoms was, well, at my 30th birthday party 10 years prior. That, too, had been a surprise, the enduring memory of which was my father -career Marine officer, stern disciplinarian, staunch opponent of all things bohemian - in his tie-dyed shirt with a headband around his stately gray head, playing Twister with three gorgeous young women in mini-dresses and bare feet. His limbs were sprawled between the others; I know this picture flashed before his inner eye as he prepared to leave this world five years later.

Still stunned, I said hello to my friends: Cheryl, the director of a bereavement counseling center. Chuck, fine editor for a commemorative magazine publishing company who once worked at Harper's. Annette, the eternally young, sassy Aussie who lived in England and spins yarns in her most delightful way; her husband Chris, who is a foot and a half taller and goes right along with her wild ways. Vasanta, a fabulous yoga teacher from Russia who is Tampa's leading practitioner of Thai massage (if you have no other body work ever done to your body, you must try Thai massage). Callie and Michelle, dear friends from across the coast who helped to pull this party together. Nick, the proprietor of this studio, a talented artist and musician who introduced me to the rich and gracious culture of the cigar, a man with whom I shared many stories, creative sessions and Cuban and Dominican cigars over the years. Joan, Nick's friend, whose late husband, a lawyer, once represented members of the Tampa mafia (her tough exterior and warm, glowing heart remind me of plenty of Godfather depictions). Robert and Candy, the happiest 20-year marriage I've seen; he owns a nice art gallery, she is a counselor and yoga teacher. Their daughter, Jessi, has to be the happiest and most balanced 16-year-old alive. Stan, who with his waist-length red hair needed no '60s outfit, a producer of concerts for such people as the Moody Blues, Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand and a producer of equally dazzling stories. Jeanette, his adorable girlfriend, whose lavish "Hat Party" is one of the greatest Christmas celebrations going in South Tampa. Paul, my newest dear friend, a great golfer and a great artist trying to connect spiritually in his late 50s. Evelyn, his wife, one of the deepest and sweetest souls on the planet. There were others I only knew a little, spouses and significant others I only met for the first time. And there was Denise, Michelle's sister, another great and mighty soul, former protégé of Deepak Chopra, feminist, child psychologist, community theater actress, my playing partner for two years in the Indian music and chanting performances we played known as kirtan, a woman born to impart love and wisdom in equal strokes … the creator and director of this party.

As I walked around, slowly gathering some sense of center, eating the luscious hors d'oeuvres, I spoke with everyone and just immersed in this feeling of being so … special. How else can one feel when he opens a door and walk into a circle of friends, all there to celebrate the same thing: the day the clock strikes 40?

I sat back on the sofa, still stunned, hearing the laughter and joy and stories move around the room. It sounded like a discordant symphony, sounds from everywhere connected by one of the only things that really matters: happiness and joy. In my first 40 years of this life journey (during which I have realized, like others, that the older I get the less I apparently know), I have at least broken bread with this realization. Michelle sat next to me, drained from setting up the party but elated by its outcome. "How does this feel to see your friends here for you like this?" she asked, taking my hand into hers and patting it.

“It feels like a representative of every type of friend I ever had,” I replied.

I still don't know where that comment came from, but it resonates with truth: In this motley crowd of old hippies, musicians, artists, yoga teachers, counselors, business owners, writers, revelers, athletes and eccentrics, I saw the reflections of half of a lifetime. And for all the trials, tribulations, disappointments, scars, bad risks, adventures, heartbreaks, successes and failures, deaths and births that mark my road to date, that mark all of their roads, I saw before me a roomful of people celebrating life.

Later, I learned that the only element of the party that didn't work out was the music. Karen Balin and her local '60s band were going play some of my favorite tunes, but Karen developed laryngitis - hardly the ailment a singer needs. Undoubtedly, along with Karen would've come her husband, Marty - the brilliant singer/ songwriter and founder of Jefferson Airplane (the Ground Zero of the San Francisco psychedelic music scene) whose subsequent tunes in the mid-1970s, “Miracles,” “Count On Me” and “Run Away”, helped define my adolesence and millions of others. Also on tap was a piano performance by Kemal Gekic, one of the most masterful concert pianists in the world, perhaps the best living performer and interpreter of Franz Lizst's music, who was just getting accustomed to life in America. Three months prior, Kemal had sat in this same room for the opening of Nick's studio and stunned the people with performances of Schubert's “Snowstorm” and Lizst's “La Chromatique.” Unfortunately, Kemal and his girlfriend were delayed in the Bahamas, where they were trying to clear his piano and their Serbian visas for entry into the United States. With the Serbian war just two months in the past in the summer of 1999, people with Serbian passports weren't well-received by U.S. customs officials. Kemal and Olga missed the party.

The weekend wasn't a complete musical loss. On the next day, my actual birthday, I began with an 11-mile run and finished by sitting 15 feet from the Moody Blues while they and the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra went through the 35 years of music that have defined the creative rhythms of my life as much as any other form of entertainment.

Following this magical weekend, I thought deep and often of what it all meant: Becoming 40 years old just 4 1/2 months before we moved out of one millennium and into another. When I turned 20, I thought of moving eagerly ahead into adulthood while hanging on to college long enough to grab that degree my family wished so much for me. When I turned 30, I felt old before my time, stressed, pressured, burdened - the nasty backhand of the yuppie years. But now, I was 40, in good condition, feeling youthful, living in a world loaded with good friends and opportunities … and completely at an emotional, spiritual, career and personal crossroads. Just two weeks prior to the surprise party, I had just resigned my position as a magazine editor. Just two months prior, I had experienced a monumental spiritual shift deep in an Amazonian jungle. I did not know where I would live next. Florida? California? Some other place?

This breach in all things comfortable, coming on the cusp of a birthday many consider the symbolic half-way mark in mortal life - at least in the first world - opened a flood of thoughts, emotions, broken pieces and old visions that would only result in one thing: A change in the direction of my life.