The Friend Who Was Dreading Forty

My friend Kim did not want to turn forty.

She was not dramatic about it, she was just honest. She said it felt like a door closing. Like a version of herself she had not fully become yet was getting further away. She had accomplished real things. She had a life that was genuinely good. But there is something about a round number that makes people take stock and she did not love everything she saw.

I wanted to give her something that pushed back against that feeling. Not in a cheesy way. Not a mug about being forty and fabulous. Something that actually said: I see who you are and I see where you are going and both of those things are good.

I made her a book.

Not a fancy custom book, a regular notebook, but I filled the first ten pages myself. One page for each year of our friendship. Not big moments, small ones. The Tuesday she called me because she got the apartment she wanted. The specific joke that only she would understand. The time she drove four hours to help me move and complained the entire way and also was the most useful person there.

I left the rest of the pages blank.

On the inside cover I wrote: the first ten years are mine. The next forty are yours.

She read it at the table and she was very quiet for a while.

Then she said: okay. I think I am okay with forty.

A milestone birthday is not a moment to celebrate a number. It is a moment to hand someone a mirror that shows them clearly. The one that shows the accumulation of who they are and the amount of life still in front of them. That is what they need at forty. Someone who has been paying attention.