I was reading one of those advice columns in the newspaper the other day. A woman who had been married to a man for 25 years was upset because her husband wanted to buy a motorcycle. She couldn’t fathom why a middle-aged man who had never ridden a motorcycle in his life would suddenly want to risk life and limb by riding one now. The distraught wife described her husband’s desire as a midlife crisis.
Why is it middle-aged women go through menopause while middle-aged men have midlife crises? I haven’t been able to make the distinction. For one thing, I can’t understand why it’s a crisis. If it is, why does a man going through a midlife crisis often has a smile on his face? Shouldn’t any crisis demand a grim expression? It seems to me that men caught in the grips of a midlife crisis are happier than they’ve been in years.
I don’t know. Maybe women are jealous because menopause isn’t a lot of fun and they don’t smile very often. I guess I’m fortunate because both my wives went through menopause with a minimum of discomfort. Outside of battling hot flashes for a few years, they never suffered through bouts of depression or irritability. I tried to be supportive and sympathetic – really, what more is there a man can do? – and eventually they got through it.
I’m also fortunate because I didn’t have a genuine midlife crisis. At least, I don’t think I did. For one thing, I went through my motorcycle phase when I was still in my late teens and early twenties. I had a 1967 Triumph Bonneville, and I loved that bike. I’m sure I would have outgrown that phase sooner or later, because I knew even back then that the odds of a motorcyclist getting through life without being maimed or killed were slim. But that phase ended sooner rather than later when my motorcycle was stolen. It was never recovered, and I moved on quickly to my Corvette phase, a blue 1965 coupe with a 327, 300-horsepower mill under the hood that, to this day, I wish I’d kept.
Maybe I’ve just lived my life backwards. Instead of buying a motorcycle when I was 43 years old, I bought an electric guitar and learned how to play. The rock’n’roll phase of your life is supposed to be when you were a teenager, right? But I had no interest in playing guitar back then. If I had, that’s probably all it would have been: a phase. Now music is a major part of my life. I went on to play in two rock bands, performing and recording and writing songs, and even the rehearsals most young musicians would regard as drudgery were for me often the highlight of my entire week. They still are when a couple of my old bandmates jam with me on Sunday mornings.
Maybe I never had a midlife crisis because I never waited until middle age to start expanding my horizons, and I’ve never stopped. Again, I’m sure I’m fortunate because I never had children of my own and therefore wasn’t tied down by family responsibilities for the first 20 or 25 years of my adulthood. And now, at 72, I can look back at my life and feel extremely satisfied because there is virtually nothing that I’ve ever wanted to do that remains undone.
I wanted to learn to fly, and I did. I earned my private pilot’s license by the time I was 30 and flew for about 12 years before giving it up. There were several reasons why I stopped flying. First, it was getting too expensive. Second, the weather in New England was often crummy, and on the few nice days for flying there were too many pilots scrambling to get into the air. Too many minutes of a rental hour were spent in line on the taxiway waiting for takeoff clearance from the tower. And, finally, flying airplanes was like riding motorcycles. I worried that someday something was going to go fatally wrong.
I wanted to learn to sail, so I took lessons after learning to fly. I never bought a boat, though, because a boat-owning uncle warned me that the two best days a boat owner has are the day he buys his craft and the day he sells it. I learned how to ski. I wanted to try my hand at broadcasting, and did UMass Lowell hockey games on radio for more than 20 years and Lowell Spinners baseball games on radio and then cable television for nearly 25. I wanted to write a book, and I had three books on baseball published and have authored several historical novels that weren’t. (Cheap plug: You can find them on this website!)
If my life sounds to you like a fantasy, well, that’s because in so many ways it has been. I was blessed to have a career many men would envy. Not only did I cover the Red Sox for 40 years as a sportswriter, I traveled and lived with the team for six of those years. How many men dream of trotting into the outfield to shag flies when the Red Sox wanted to take extra batting practice, or playing pepper with the coaches, for just one single day in their lives? I did that on almost a daily basis for six years on road trips. But you know what? It still wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to do more in my quest to fulfill my life.
There are some experiences I would gladly have avoided if I could have. I would not have considered my life incomplete if I could have skipped my two years in the Army, for example. But I knew from an early age that when I reached old age, I did not want to look back at my life regretting the things I’d never done that I wished I had done and could no longer do. I have done nearly all those things. So what’s left? Not much. I’d like to try whitewater rafting and rent a sailboat with one of my brothers who is a master sailor and cruise the Caribbean for a week. And there are still more books and songs to write. I know my future will be far from boring.
I am not an advice columnist, but for what it’s worth my advice to all you men out there, regardless of your age, is go ahead and enjoy your so-called midlife crisis to the fullest. The earlier you start it, and the longer it lasts, the better. If the lady in your life tells you to grow up, just tell her you’re still growing. Remind her that women do not have a monopoly on menopause, and then flash that midlife smile of satisfaction.
Great blog! I look forward to reading more! For me, I actually did do whitewater rafting….up in Oregon on the Snake River and on the Colorado River. Great experience! I look forward to reading more on your journey!
Your kid brother, Dick