All the Time in the World

November 16th, 1965.

Aaaah, so this is sixty.

6.

0.

Falling, falling, falling.

November 16th, 1965.

For a better timeline vantage point, “I Got You, Babe” was top of the charts.

Friends were over last night. Melanie was in her Hospitality Zone. The work she puts in! Table setting below. I played my iTunes favorites, which solved the recurring “what-music-do-we-play?” challenge.

“We shall play my music,” I declared in my Adam Declaring Voice, with maybe a little too much emphasis on me, me, me.

I had a birthday song: I chose the crackling, fireplace warmth of “We Have All the Time in the World.” Louis Armstrong was not correct on this matter. I have the calendar to prove it. But if you’re at the dinner table and everyone is laughing, you can close your eyes for a fraction of a second, and hear he was possibly on to something.

I baked my own cake and candied my own kumquats.

Before the sleeve rolling up, I laid the counter out like a chemistry lab, each ingredient in its own little white container. There were four Earl Grey tea bags simmered in milk. Whip cream peaks gently collapsing like snowy elf hats. But only until they had a sheen!. Crap! It turns out we already had vanilla extract. Wasted trip to the store. An overly cautious judgement call on flour past its expiration date. Too close to the recipe’s end, there was a near miss forgetting to fold the Earl Grey concoction into the egg whites. “How the fuck?”

Swearing.

Cake no worse for wear the table reported later.

Small pictures were placed around the table in cute little stands (see below.)

Friends were asked to guess where I was in each photo. Turns out: Bainbridge Island, the summit of Mt. Rainier waving a mountain ax, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, the Luberon in the South of France (some disputing on this location), a headshot photographer’s studio in Soho. The mystery man leaning perhaps too confidently over a wooden fence holding a wedding top hat.

England.

There was marveling at hair loss. Someone asked Melanie if a picture of me at eighteen was me. The cognitive disconnect between interior and exterior age is a problem I’m increasingly working through. I stare at old photos of myself like I’m trying to unscrabble a Rubik’s cube.

I broke out my favorite story about my acting career.

Years after the collapse and the tail between my legs, I found an entire thread about myself online. It had the most adoring thing I’ve ever read about myself. This was followed a few comments later by a comment so rude about me it crossed into hilariously funny. Perfect for a dinner party when things are starting to loosen up.

No, I will never tell you.

There was a particularly special gift: Melanie framed three pictures of the family for my wall: one of my son leaning tight against my daughter-in-law, an engagement picture. Then Melanie in the center, in the snow, a a furry winter coat hat circling her face. Our gentle matriarch. Then daughter leaning left against dad, the two sitting on a Brooklyn sidewalk in yellow leaves. A real smile for the camera. The picture frames have heft that mean business. They will go over my piano. I will accidentally allow them to be seen on Zoom calls from time to time.

They are my people. They are beautiful. “Yes, I agree.”

At midnight, my friends counted down to my birthday like it was New Year’s.

This morning, the kitchen looks like a war zone. There are wine bottles in gift bags hiding around doors. I have confused whose gifts came from whom. A chin-scratcher of a problem.

Shit: the whip cream was left out. I had no idea we had so many plates. You can count them in dishwasher cycles. It seems someone gave me a supply of curious candy. However many years are left for me in Fate’s hourglass, I will never finish this supply. If I have grandchildren, I will need to remind myself to move them to an upper shelf when they race from room to room like little terrors, stopping only for candy.

This morning, I’m aware I can play the “it’s my birthday, I’m not helping clean up card,” but the devastation stretches across three rooms, and that dog won’t hunt.

Sixty wasn’t as cruel as forty, but kinder than Kamikaze Fifty.

There are adventures yet for the two of us that are coming into focus like Polaroids. One will be a trip to Japan with the family next April. A much, much, much longer time in France, a “foot to the earth” in Paris, if the stars align. It’s okay if they don’t. It’s all okay.

I bought myself a new electric guitar. Oh, the poor neighbors. The best toy I ever owned was a convertible. The second best might be this guitar.

My best friend called yesterday from Los Angeles.

After a five minute ritual of “what the fuck do you want?” whenever we pick up the phone for each other, the two of us talked for a good hour. I can’t remember a word of it, so it must have been a good call.

He never misses a birthday. Ever. Not one.

Alannah called a few minutes ago. I spoke quietly since Melanie was still sleeping. My son will call later today.

They are both doing well, out in the wide world, three thousand miles in either direction.

Alannah is, I learn, working on a Substack post. Every time she tells me she’s writing something, my heart skips a beat.

Daniel and I will go skydiving in Moab before I hit sixty-one. It’s on the calendar now. I think about this at 3am. I try to imagine smiling for a video photographer at terminal velocity.

But there’s no one I trust more in the world to jump with. Somehow that we’re both jumping together makes it easier. He’s my secret parachute. These moments as father and son are cement.

And so, sixty…

I have a small handful of sharp regrets, but I wouldn’t swap them out, even if I could. It might have changed everything after.

And I certainly wouldn’t want to do the first sixty over. Jesus. Once was more than enough. I love my wife. I love my friends.

And…

Here we go…

Parachute open, falling falling falling, taking in the view.

And All the Time in the World.