PBS is in my top five television stations. My best friend is my mother. I finally understand that there is magic everywhere, especially on a memory foam mattress with three accompanying pillows.
This is 40.
The good news (thank you, print newspapers) is that I shared turning middle age in 2023 with the company of figures like Thor and Spiderman and Carrie Underwood and Michael Che and Kate Middleton's sister and Emily Blunt. Jesse Eisenberg also turned 40 last year.
The other great thing about turning 40 is that as an anthropology major 20 years ago (in which now I can say "20 years ago" with upmost authority and consciousness) is the compounding experiential proof that time is not linear. Enough time has surpassed that events and people start circling through again and again. I used to cry at "Sesame Street" and laugh at The Kennedy Center Honors. Now it's the opposite, although everything might just be part of being human, anyway.
I hope that both my younger and older colleagues consider that my listening to NPR is situated somewhere between ironically cool and intellectually coherent bordering on the completely expected. A new episode of "All Creatures Great and Small" on OPB? Heck yeah! Science Friday on NPR? During the pandemic my 70-something-year-old mother and I reminded each other through text message complete with emoticons every Friday at 10:52 am that the show was coming up. Then we sat in our respective driveways to listen. At 12:02.53 pm we called each other to talk about Ira Flatow.
My friends and I have board game nights once a month where we listen to new band names that I can't pronounce over conversations about Settlers of CATAN and sleep aids. Do you have any wood? And I really hope that melatonin isn't addictive because I'm sure taking a lot of it. But it's totally worth it. I've never slept so well.
No more jungles or garage floors for me to slumber on for a night in surprising angles (or at least not as many.) I find my adventures now talking to strangers in line at Central Oregon's fleet of local coffee roasters. I just realized that TUMS are awesome, opening my eyes to the fact that surprise and learning can be found in the everyday. I bring my own pillow in a L.L. Bean flannel pillowcase wherever I go. I got this.
On a more sober note, thank goodness for Michael Bublé and his flavored water, I have a piece of metal in my body. Unfortunately, it is not the remnants of the belly button piercing from 20 years ago. Rather it is replacement from too much fun and irreverent dance moves at The Summit Saloon with no thought to the future whatsoever, which apparently is now. Thank goodness I didn't know that then. It was that wild adventure in my 20s plus the quilting that I started six years ago — seriously, the most amazing community of people ever — that contributed to the metal replacement in my spine. It is all part of the path.
Being 40 in 2024 does have its perks. I have been a part of time and love and friendship. I have seen my friends marry and raise the most amazing children who go to local breweries and sometimes disturb the staff. I'm contributing to more Go Fund Me campaigns than I ever have before. And in full disclosure, I am a PBS contributor. Pound sign PBS.
I recognize the sound of a dial-up connection and understand the concept of "the cloud" (honestly, really just about 82% understand it and I just had to Google "what is chatgpt.") Yet perhaps that's the middle way. The best of both worlds. Always learning and unlearning. The good news (thank you, print newspapers – did I already say that?) is that the social media data center is just an hour away in Prineville, so I can always knock on their door and ask for my photographs back. I hear they have their electricians and staff do stretches before starting shifts. That's pretty cool, too.
Sometimes I still drive to the Old Mill District, that used to be ruins of the Shevlin-Hixon Mill when I was in high school, then singing to No Doubt while exploring the remnants and artifacts of the smokestack building on a Friday night. When do memories meld into reality?
Now. In the middle. In REI while selecting backpacking meals. When we have both a future and a past as part of the whole. When we can still change the world with our knowledge and perseverance and hope and heart. Really. It all matters. Every time, no matter time. It matters.
Like that James Herriot character — what a star.
*Note of Transparency: Soundtrack for both the writing and editing of this piece attributed to The Dave Matthews Band albums, years 1996-2009.
—Kimberly Bowker is a narrative journalist based in Bend. She is now 41.
