This Is 40

Who says there's only one kind of occasion that merits the formal invitations, the gorgeous dress, the carefully curated feast? Kate Bolick had celebrated plenty of friends at their weddings. As a landmark birthday approached, she decided it was time to throw an extravaganza of her own.

 When he was 65, the celebrated New Yorker humorist James Thurber quipped to an interviewer that if there were 15 months in every year he’d only be 48. His math was a little off—he’d have been 52—but his point holds: “That’s the trouble with us. We number everything,” Thurber said. “Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than 12 years between the ages of 28 and 40.” I agree—there is no other chapter of my life that felt so fertile (no pun intended) and distinct, and as it came to a close I rued the cruelty of its expiration date.

My friend Alexandra felt the same way, so when we turned 38 (in the same week of July) she suggested that instead of each facing the dreaded 4-0 alone, we celebrate it together. I asked her to please not mention that number again until we were at least 39. Thirty-seven had not gone the way I’d wanted, and I already loved 38 for how it allowed me to cling to the vaguely nubile thirtysomething, even if my father kept calling up to say, “How’s my middle-aged daughter today?” and then erupting into loud guffaws.
Thirty-eight turned out to be only so-so, but 39 started out pretty great, so by the time Alexandra and I began brainstorming ideas last year I was ready to openly acknowledge arriving at 40 instead of just slink across the threshold and hope nobody would notice. We both live in Brooklyn, but we have the sort of e-mail correspondence that’s its own alternate reality: There is actual life, and then there is everything we think and feel about it, which we zing back and forth in a ceaseless stream of uncensored, diaryesque messages, and I blame this lawless environment for how quickly our ambitions morphed from a dinner party at her place to a week on the coast of Massachusetts, culminating in a clambake by the sea.
“Think Martha Stewart goes Grey Gardens,” I told the prop stylist, because yes, we hired one. Tables were rented. A tent considered. A menu fastidiously planned. A save the date was sent to 40 (get it?) of our closest family and mutual friends. We started referring to the event as our Platonic Lesbian Birthday Wedding. Alexandra’s actual husband expressed frank concern that we were going overboard, but we were like those prank cake candles that reignite as soon as they’re blown out.
For me, this party actually was a bit like a wedding—it was the first time I’d asked my family and friends to take considerable trouble to gather together on my behalf, not to mention spend their money to get there. (My friend Gary even stealthily conscripted everyone into writing 40-word toasts.) Initially I had to convince myself that making such a request was appropriate. It helped when my best friend, Erika, a new mother and college professor, did everything she could to rejuggle teaching and child care to fly out from New Mexico. I’d been her maid of honor, and the seriousness with which she took my invitation was her way of saying that my big event was just as legitimate as hers had been.
Admittedly, this in turn sparked a new concern—what if I did want a wedding someday? Would everyone be willing to make the effort all over again? Did I get points for sparing them the added expenditures of a bridal shower, bachelorette party, reception dinner, day-after brunch, and a gift, plus the bonus of knowing that, unlike nearly half of the weddings they go to, this celebration wouldn’t end in divorce? If there was one thing I could assure my guests, it was that I’d be around until I was dead.
So it’s only natural that for my big day I would totally freak out about The Dress. It would be a dress, of course, and not just any dress but my feelings about the event incarnate, which I could see in my mind’s eye with astonishing precision: a loose and breezy 1970s-esque floor-length tomato-red gown with a halter neck, a PG-13 version of a slinky nightgown I remembered my mother having when I was little. It would be casual enough for cracking open lobster shells and chasing my nieces on the lawn, while still exuding a bold-yet-understated singularity befitting a woman of 40.