38

The thought of turning thirty-eight has left me feeling a little apprehensive and anxious the past few months. But it's not what you think. Many of my friends are steeling themselves for the milestone birthday looming ahead in the very near future and express their sorrow and despair about being "old." My prompt reply of "You're not old" or "I'm not old" is met with a smug smirk or an eye roll implying I'm delusional or in denial about just exactly how "old" I am.  While I've felt some apprehension about turning thirty-eight, my apprehension has nothing to do with the fear of being old.

I remember in 1988, when my father turned thirty-eight. I was ten.  I remember a similar feeling of apprehension and anxiety. My dad's father died at the age of thirty-eight, when my own father was only ten years old. Some people noted this fact--this similarity. While I knew my father wasn't sick, I still felt the anxiety creeping up inside of me. At ten, I remember thinking I was too young to be without my dad and twenty-eight years later that feeling hasn't changed. I remember feeling a sense of relief flood over me five months later when I turned eleven, as though some spell was broken. I'm not superstitious nor do I believe in ghosts, but I must admit I was spooked then. And maybe just a little spooked now.

While I don't know much about the days following my grandfather's death, I doubt the word "old" was ever used. More likely the refrain was "too young." My great grandparents were far too young to be burying their second grown child in a little over a year. My grammy at the age of thirty was far too young to be a widow. My father and his two younger sisters were far too young to be without a father. And at the age of thirty-eight, my grandfather was far too young to die.

Growing up, my grandparent's engagement photos were always on display. The double frame would migrate around our house from the piano to the shadow box to the coffee table. When I moved into my first apartment, my mother passed the photos on to me, and they have always found a new spot every time I've moved. Unlike many engagement photos today where the groom-to-be and bride-to-be gaze adoringly at one another in a "candid" moment, my grandparents were photographed individually. In the sepia toned photos, they look happy, healthy, hopeful, and most notably young. Looking at my grandfather's young handsome face, I struggle to even fathom how a little more than a decade later, he would be betrayed by his lungs-his breath and life taken away. I can't imagine the anger, the frustration, and sadness he must have felt at being denied the privilege of growing old. He never had the experience of proudly slinging his arm around his son's shoulders when he graduated high school or walking his daughters down the aisle on their wedding days or cradling one of his seven grandchildren.

Over twenty years after his death, my grammy married an exceptional man who was everything any grandchild could ask for in a grandfather. But I also remembered the void before him. When it was just my grammy alone in the house my grandfather built. I loved my step-grandfather, but I always called him by his first name because I knew the man in the double picture frame was my grandfather, even though I never met him.

This summer, I was struck by the following line from Christina Baker Kline's Orphan Train. "I've come to think that's what heaven is a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on." But how do you carry the memory of a person you never knew? How do you remember someone whose only presence was an absence?

My first year teaching while prepping a poetry unit, I stumbled across a poem by Lucille Clifton called "the thirty-eighth year."  I was immediately drawn to the number. In the melancholic poem, Clifton contemplates her life and references her own mother's death at the age of forty-four. Clifton's sadness and regret is palpable as she considers how she has lived her life in fear and contemplates her own mortality. After perusing some of her other poems, I found one she wrote twenty-five years later which she titled "There is a Girl Inside."  She describes herself as "A green tree in a forest of kindling." I always felt a sense of happy relief noting her youthful vigor as she approached the late autumn of her life. Thirty-eight and forty-four weren't the end; they weren't inauspicious. They were just numbers.

While I'm in no rush to get old, I don't fear it either. In fact, I hope I'm granted the privilege of growing old-- one day. The alternative to not growing old holds no appeal. I hope to one day sling my arm around my boys' waists when they graduate from high school, hold tightly to their arms when they walk me down the aisle on their wedding days,  and one day hold my grandchild in my arms.

My grandfather may not have been physically present in my life, but I still note his presence, his importance, his impact. If heaven is a place in the living's memory, he's there. A few weeks ago, my father was driving past the cemetery where my grandfather is buried and noticed a woman walking near my grandfather's grave. He turned his truck around and parked in the church lot. At first he didn't recognize his cousin who he hadn't seen in years. She had decided to stop at the cemetery to leave some flowers on a few graves and one of them was my grandfather's.

His life, his presence remembered.

When I look at my son, I note how his ears stick out just a bit like his great grandfather's.

His life, his presence remembered.

As I begin to pedal on the elliptical machine, I enter my age- first a three then an eight- and breathe in and out deeply and think of my grandfather.

I think about what thirty-eight isn't. It certainly isn't enough. It isn't old. It isn't unlucky. And it isn't anything to fear. And then I consider what thirty-eight is. It is unfinished. It is young. It is a blessing. And it's just a number.