"And... I'm gonna be forty."

Harry: When?
Sally: Someday.
Harry: In eight years.
Sally: But it's there. It's just sitting there, like some big dead end. And it's not the same for men. Charlie Chaplin had kids when he was 73.
Harry: Yeah, but he was too old to pick them up.

Well, it's here. In 2 days, I will be officially middle-aged. If I live to be 80, given my family's history, I will feel very lucky. So this is at best a half way mark. Kind of serious stuff!

My main concern of the last decade was having kids before it was too late. I wanted two, and now I have a matched set and they are absolutely beautiful, inside and out. My family is my center and my joy. That is a triumph, given where I was at age 33, an overworked, single New Yorker, cleaning death dust from my apartment. Finding Mike when I did was the key to all if it. He and I had the same vision, from the very beginning.

The first few years were a whirlwind. Buying a house, getting married, having Jake. And then upending our life to create a strong base for the kind of family life we wanted. We planned it all out. My Manhattan achievement-oriented friends were kind of shocked at our exodus, and admitted they wished they had the chutspah to do it too (money was not the barrier, believe me, for any of them).

And as for our grand Virginia experiment, well, it's been three years and it doesn't feel all that experimental anymore. In fact, you know it's not when you kind of wish it were time to move again because the closets would all get cleaned out. But we're not going anywhere. And honestly, I've never before felt as part of a community as I do here (thanks mostly to our amazing moms' club. You wonderful women know who you are!!!).

I have a little box full of index cards I made when I lived in Brooklyn. At around age 30, following instructions from a little book with a blue cover, I sat in a cute French cafe around the corner from my apartment, sipped cafe au lait and brainstormed all the things I wanted to do in life. Then I drew a crayon picture of a sun rising over mountains and a little wandering river/lake and pasted it on the box. Prophetic, huh?

Last year I looked through the cards and realized I had had very short-term thinking. I have accomplished nearly every one of my goals from age 30.

So, I guess that's what being 40 really means to me - it's about time to fill up that box with some new cards!