Backside of the Time-Space Mountain
The morning I turned 42, I walked through the front door saturated from a Men’s Health dumbbell workout and was greeted by my 4-year-old in the hallway with adorable birthday wishes. It was a fine moment enhanced by endorphins and thus strange timing for a rude thought. When he’s my age, I’ll be dead.
Even stranger — and this is hard to believe so I want to promise you it was not a hallucination — my child had the same thought in the same moment without keeping it to himself. He said happy birthday, I love you, and when he’s my age I’ll be dead. There was no transition, as if these three statements should flow together like an address.
What a spooky intuitive creature. Kids are always the scariest part of horror movies. I don’t think he meant anything by it. He doesn’t know he’s a beneficiary on the 401(k). I haven’t shied from answering my children’s questions about death, so I suppose they’re just working through the concept in conversation and blending with math.
Forty-two does feel different. Forty is a round milestone number, but you hope it’s not quite the second half because there will be some stoppage time added after 80. (Or not, based on the life expectancy in my head and expressed by my son in that sweet birthday interaction.)
Eighty-four will be challenging to reach with my family health history. There is a way to come to indifferent if not peaceful terms with being closer to the end than the beginning. It’s kind of a hack but makes sense in my mind.
We want to extend our lives for more time with our kids. I have tons of hobbies and joys that would keep me ticking without them, but my boys are my why. I also remain a huge fan of my wife, but the hack doesn’t work for us. Here it is: Counter a depressing thought with a more depressing thought.
It’s sad I’m over halfway through.
A staggering proportion of all the time you will ever spend with your kids is before age 18. The estimates I’ve seen are in the 80-90 percent range. A cursory Claude prompt falls in line.
So if the main draw to living long is hanging with the kids, then there’s no need to be sad because most of it will be over pretty soon. I’m trying to make you feel better.
Extending that logic, a rational actor — again, assuming kids offer the highest utility — would maximize and be present in the time with them before they move out as young adults. That’s where I struggle to apply something that sounds right in theory.
Perfect example, I spent last week with them at the in-laws in L.A. and flew back while they take an extra week. Seven days each, back-to-back, a juxtaposition of opposite lives a la Nicky Cage in the underrated film “The Family Man.”
Which week was better? Well I can tell you Disneyland is excruciating. I try to appreciate the creativity but wonder if it can only be fun under the influence of something strong enough — booze, drugs, misplaced nostalgia — to warp time perception. You stand in line forever to ride a cart that moves unremarkably for a few minutes while animatronics are presented like they’re masterpieces on loan from the Louvre. We have to continuously stuff our kids’ faces with garbage food, essentially drugging them to make it through the day. I can’t think of many worse ways to spend $900, maybe the deductible on an optional enema or a parlay including a Cowboys playoff win.
The one highlight was tricking (more like omitting information) the little one into riding Space Mountain after a line attendant applauded when he barely cleared the 40-inch height requirement. Here’s him saying afterwards in Mandarin he never wants to go on the ride again.
Jumping to Week 2, I’ve been alone in the house for five days. An impeccable diet, porn without scheduling or secrecy, staying up late and sleeping in, no chauffeuring in traffic, spending two hours at Costco gathering entries for my Claude-built unit price comparison app slyly named “Steel” as a nod to Salesforce CPQ’s precursor SteelBrick and a wordplay on “steal” as in a bargain… Do I wish my kids were here now? That’s entrapment.
The fairest way to put it is I don’t miss them because I know they’re coming back. Yet on my deathbed given a choice to teleport to Week 1 or Week 2 this month, it almost brings me to tears how much I’d want to go to Disneyland. I’ve blabbered many times about this misalignment between present and future feelings, best summed up by Andy Bernard’s line in “The Office” about wishing you knew you were in the good old days before you actually left them.
I met my perfect newborn niece in L.A., the daughter I requested twice from my wife to no avail, although she said it’s my fault because of how chromosome contribution works but I don’t care to look this up because what’s my incentive to risk being proven wrong when I believe I’m right.
I couldn’t answer any of my sister-in-law’s questions about this precious age because I don’t remember. There were numerous dumb but honest blog posts about how much it sucked, but of course on the deathbed I would take any of those weeks over this Single Ronnie one. I would even do it now. Here’s No. 1 wearing the same outfit:
And No. 2, the ghastly mindreader:
A solid explanation for why it’s so hard to be present and not take time for granted (at least for me) is the difference between something being pleasurable and meaningful. I would feel so good crushing the rest of the Girl Scout cookies in the pantry and watching “Project Hail Mary” again. But I feel happy working out, eating right and writing even though in the moment they feel about as good as the knowledge of entering the back half of a timeline with an end closer than it appears.