Younger Than That Now

I'm the number on Henry Aaron's back. Another birthday came and went and, for the first time, I'm uncomfortable revealing my age. 44 just seems roundly middle-aged and I simply can't spit it out without a struggle. The march toward death somehow seems much less abstract than even a few days ago, when I was still a spry 43. I was reminded by a dear college friend that I thought the universe would explode the day I turned 20 -- but that was mostly the byproduct of being a transfer student at Berkeley surrounded by 18-year-old freshmen (and by virtue of my transfer status, which made me somehow less than...). Then again, I did always try to act older. Even as a child  I did it, probably as a mechanism to mask my-less-than-ideal upbringing as the product of a welfare-reliant single mom.  

As a result, I became far too serious about my lot in life. I was obsessed with career, with relationships. Gripping way too tight. Not pretty. Stupid, really. Again, if I want to blame everything on my childhood -- and I believe using childhood as an excuse for anything that happens in the present is just a crutch -- I was trying to overcompensate for the waterbed-like fluidity of my youth, searching for the solid ground I alone could provide. 

I learned to not rely on my parents, 'cause if I did, I'd be disappointed. So I married young, sold myself out young, because I was in a hurry. I often think about the path I took, one that has mostly kept me in Los Angeles, for better or worse.  Till I'm dead, I will long to live elsewhere. 

I guess it's been the usual sort of life. I've gotten to mostly do what I've wanted but I'm not particularly satisfied with my accomplishments. Somehow, there's something more interesting and more rewarding up ahead. It's one of the things that keeps me going. I suspect it's much the same with everyone. 

44. So now I'm thinking, I've got to get my ass in gear. My wife reminds me that our son's bar mitzvah is just seven years away, a thought that takes my breath away when I seriously ponder it.  Time is passing. It stares at me through my windshield every morning on my short commute: South on Colfax from Burbank to Ventura, left on Ventura to the Cahuenga Pass.   I've somehow been fated to live my life in the San Fernando Valley, the same region in which I was raised, a place that seriously reflects who I am -- and I say that proudly without irony (no, really). But it's not the same place. The change in the area I lived -- Sepulveda, Panorama City -- is drastic. The fact that these communities have become something of a haven for Spanish-speaking immigrants speaks loudly about the tenuous state of the area when I moved here in 1973. Sepulveda was a low-rent community then; thus, the price was right for us. The price is right now.

I live not far from where I grew up, but it's not the same place. (Thank god the Frosty Queen in Granada Hills remains untouched by time) This past summer, I took my son to swimming lessons, held at a private home on the Granada Hills-Northridge border. My old teenage stomping grounds. Now feels real ghetto. But in early 1979, I moved from a ratty apartment in Sepulveda to a rented house in Granada Hills north of Chatsworth Street and west of Louise. Though we had a septic tank, an unmowed lawn and four or five junked-out old Buicks taking up lawn space at any one time, I thought I'd moved to fucking Beverly Hills. The photo at the top of this website was taken in my backyard -- where my beautiful 1968 Camaro was often parked. When I say I'm Jewish White Trash, I'm not lying. 

So now I'm 44. Four years short of the age in which my mother died. An age in which my mind tells me it's time to haul ass. Fucking hell. When do we get to relax?