One Word

Reverb10 Prompt (from Gwen Bell): Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

Half-life. A hyphenated word, yes, but it’s the word that immediately comes to mind. Three days ago I turned forty. I was home for Thanksgiving weekend, and that particular morning I woke up to my eight-year-old nephew Joey bouncing up and down on my air mattress in his Spider-Man pajamas, imploring me to get up so that he could play “War of the Monsters” with me. I didn’t feel like getting up right then, but I was relieved the big day had finally arrived. Not since turning twenty-one had a birthday felt significant in the least. But this one caught me by surprise, and my ruminating began as soon as 2010 rang in. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind I had long ago planted the thought that forty marked the cut-off point in separating the young from the “not so young.” I was fourteen when my Dad crossed over; sixteen when Mom hit the mark. I vaguely recall the parties, the jokes about getting old, the gray starting to show. “The Big 4-0” was a big deal for sure, and sure enough those old farts were right when they reminded me that my day would come, eventually.

I tend to choose the titles of my creative projects before I start writing or recording, when I can sense only the fuzziest of outlines and my ideas are in their most nascent form. “Half-life” succeeded “The Lucky Dark”, which followed “Waiting for the Miracle”. Thinking about 2011 stirs my mind into a whiteout, like one of those holiday snow globes. I’m not at all sure what to expect, given all the irons in the fire, but what I’d like 2011 to be about is fruition. Wow, that came a lot easier than I expected.

Letting go of my youth, for me, means shifting from a focus on what’s potential to what’s actual. I’ve spent most of this forty year ride in the passenger seat, waiting to see what would happen next; wishing someone would come along and take me somewhere new and exciting; hoping everything would just fall into place and that I’d always get where I needed to go. Waiting, wishing, hoping that I’d eventually arrive in one piece and that I would enjoy the ride. And I suppose I got what I hoped for. I’m here. I’ve arrived. This is it. I am who I am. I’m doing what I do. It’s been this way all along, but I didn’t fully realize it, accept it, embrace it.

So, fruition it is. Let’s see what I can actually do when I stop waiting until some far off future day when I’m finally good enough to go all-out and do all that I hope to do as well as I can possibly do it. You know, when I’m like, forty or something.