My youngest girl will be 17 in a few days. She has two siblings, by all indications even from the same father and mother, who are 23 and 27 years old. Want to say, already big kids. Kids are something you never really stop raising. I do not know how many years I have left here, but I am pretty sure that if I have the opportunity for even a few seconds to say goodbye to this life when I am clearly conscious, my last thought will be about them and my greatest gratitude will be for leaving the world before them. I have written here before: if I am given only one wish, I will only ask for it. Everything else can be dealt with.
Still, at an age where on a clear day he looks straight towards his 53rd birthday (please do not worry, I will update you in time so you can make a modest gift), your head fills with thoughts. Some of them are of the type once attributed to the 40s crisis, but others, much more significant to me, belong to a much deeper realm. The children leaving the family nest is of course graded, and in families where there are large age gaps between the older and younger siblings, the sons of the former already come to visit before the latter leave. Still, since the two older ones are already out of the house and the younger one gets an audience at home (i.e. her parents) for no more than an hour or two a day – between school, watching and other record pursuits at this age, I find myself more and more alone.
Do not get me wrong, God forbid: we are built in such a way that the body does not lag far behind the mind. It’s fun to crash into the nocturnal silence into the “sports news” (I hope it’s not misunderstood to say that Miri Nevo is the woman I fall asleep with every night, except on days when she sends Maya Ronen instead), to get up sleepy from the couch, to slip a little on the fur of The bitch and shuffle towards the dark bedroom. Still, one should not ignore the fact that the less time I spent raising the children (not that I was a “homemaker”, not at all, but towards the end of the 53rd year, one can certainly admit that between the two of us, she is better at making money and I better get the best out of the kitchen ), So increased my quality time with myself.
It used to seem to me that this “felt” is the pinnacle of all desire. When I fantasized as men did about myself in a bachelor apartment, I did not envision young women coming and going even before dawn, but mostly myself with myself. Sometimes I would even hum to myself one of the least familiar of the Beatles’ songs “I ME MINE”, something that in a free translation into Hebrew could be called: “I am my own”.
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This age, more than it tells, is a state of mind that wonders what life will look like in the coming decades. There will be those who will say that in the face of the hedonistic lifestyle, the thinking at the level of the decades is somewhat pretentious, and yet – I have nothing but to stick to the dry statistics and determine that assuming it aligns with the average, then we are talking about how many – 30 years or so? At this age you know that even 30 years is bound to end and that even if I am blessed with good health, there must be an element of gradual decline here. I do not say this in anger, nor in fear – this is life and I have no reason to think that my life will be so extraordinary.
And not just about myself: because it’s time to also take a look at who has carried the stretcher with you over the years, mainly because couples at this age are no longer able to imagine each other without the stretcher on their shoulder. For years you have been “playing” with Dad and Mom, but how many common interests do you have to develop your own content world? How much love is worth, even to the lucky ones who have won it, as the seat belt that has kept you in place over the years is loosening, just because of the fact that you no longer have to prepare three meals a day, school sandwiches, measure heat, bounce to class and more.
It’s not that I retired from the race. Oh, absolutely not, quite the opposite. I have previously shared with the esteemed readers the fact that I, until a few years ago who had his hours in hand, took on quite a few demanding professional tasks that take me out of the house every morning as early as around seven in the morning, and do not end until the evening. Seems to me like “half day”), but I try to make friends with the new daily routine, the one where the family drains mostly for weekends.
So every night I go up to the bridge of command, as befits the captain of the living room sofa – and look out over the horizon: I do not know if there is a safe shore to which all thoughts wander, I only know that if there is one, I will not let it slip away from me.