A Little Cracked by 50

I’ve been thinking about my friend Susie. When we started working for the same law firm in Quito many years ago, I was 21 and she was 46. Still, we became the best of friends and I couldn’t say if she was more of a mentor, a mother confessor or a second sister to me.

At the time we met, Susie had already survived the loss of her husband and twin sons, spent six months in a wheelchair, and undergone seven (yes, seven!) breast cancer surgeries, not to mention a host of “lesser” disasters in life. But at the slightest hint that an occasional bout of self-pity might be condoned, Susie would dismiss it with flick of her fingers and say, “It’s just stuff.” She had no time to wallow; there was life to be embraced.

The night before I left Ecuador, I went over to Susie’s for supper. She gave me a small plastic box shaped like a peanut and said, “Here – this won’t take up much room in your suitcase. But don’t open it until you get to where you’re going.”

Naturally, I opened it that night, in the car on my way home. Inside the plastic peanut was a little bean-filled baby doll with a note that read, “Friends always.”

The following year, Susie had an eighth breast cancer operation and shortly afterward, the cancer filled her stomach. She and her daughter, Carmen, flew up to M. D. Anderson in Houston for a second opinion. The doctors there confirmed the prognosis: 6 months at the very most. Susie was told to go home and prepare to die. Instead, she and Carmen came to spend a week of vacation with me.

Ignoring the medical timetable completely, Susie lived another 14 months. In September of 1985, I called to wish her a happy birthday; Carmen answered the phone instead and told me that her mother had died that morning. It was Susie’s 50th birthday.

I remember thinking that in 25 years I would be the same age. I hoped that by then I would have that kind of strength, that unshakeable faith in God, that dependable sense of perspective and absurdity. I wanted to give off that same aura of wisdom.

Well, Susie, here I am. I made it to 50 and, I must say, I’m a little disappointed.

When I look in the mirror, there is no mantle of elder-hood ready to descend around my shoulders, a physical manifestation of deep inner wisdom. There’s just some gray hair, artfully hidden by my friend Garnier.

Not that I haven’t learned a few things along the way. A few weeks after you died, Carmen gave birth to her second daughter and I found out I was expecting my first son. So I’ve learned the fierce joy and absolute confusion of being a parent and helplessly loving the children you want to invest with wings and ground for life.

I’ve had a bad marriage and a wonderful marriage, and learned the difference between the two.

I’ve learned about losing the person you want to grow old with, before you finish being young together.

I’ve learned that I will not die of embarrassment, work or frustration. And that some things, like chocolate, are both bad and good for me and I have to choose which price to pay.

I’ve learned that dreams don’t go away just because other things are more urgent.

I’ve learned that no matter how much I learn, it’s still just a drop in the bucket.

Last night, I was going through some old poems of mine, and came across one written at the ripe old age of 14. It ended with the line, “Memories are a friend and a bag of peanuts.”

I still have the little plastic peanut Susie gave me, although the shell is cracked. It should be – after all these years, I’m a little cracked in places, too. But I’m blessed with friends who are friends always, and maybe it’s alright that my mantle of elder wisdom has yet to come. Maybe I need to embrace my inner nut.

Or maybe I just haven’t yet gotten to where I’m going.