I wish a teleprompter existed for everyday life. The thoughts that form clearly in my mind sometimes disappear in a flash. In the microsecond it takes me to inhale so I can utter a clever zinger, it flies away. Sometimes I watch it flutter out of reach. I try to stop it, but it moves on, perhaps into a spaghetti-like region of my brain where years of snappy comebacks await rediscovery. If only it would happen before I take the inhale. No doubt Simon and Garfunkel had just finished a conversation with a forty-year-old woman when they wrote "The Sound of Silence."
I hadn't even finished reading the above passage on the first page of Chunneling Through Forty by Anne McAneny when I knew I was going to love this book. I was already giggling and relating to Susanna, the main character.
Susanna had just turned forty and was having a very hard time with the concept of aging. She made a list of five things she'd always wanted to do but never had, and vowed to do them all. She tackled the list with a vengeance, causing her friends and family to shake their heads and wonder about her sanity. Her journey through the next year tells a tale I suspect many of us can relate to.
I started reading the book last Saturday night and spent a couple of hours curled up in our blue recliner laughing so hard that tears rolled down my cheeks. I had to keep wiping my eyes so I could even see the words on my Kindle and start giggling again. Thane gave up on asking me what was so funny and just rolled his eyes at me. I finally reluctantly put it down to go to bed.
Sunday morning, I couldn't resist. Rowan was still in her room, so I curled back into the recliner. Once again, tears were streaming. Rowan called out to ask what was so funny. "Just the book I'm reading," I managed to gasp out. A few minutes later she came up behind me and clapped her hand over my mouth. I nearly suffocated: you just can't breath when you're laughing that hard and someone covers your mouth! It just drove her crazy that I was laughing so hard and she wasn't in on the joke.
Of course, in the end Susanna works out her issues and comes to grips with being forty. She learns, with the help of Eddie, a blues piano teacher, that she doesn't need to tackle life as if she only has one year to get everything in. She relaxes.
Eddie also tried to teach Susanna a lesson that I figured out for myself: it just doesn't do to regret. Everything that has come to my life, whether through my own choices or someone else's, has laid the foundation for who I am. While I may not be especially proud of a few choices I've made or thrilled with every circumstance that has occurred, I would not be me if my history had been different, and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with who I am.
