The Summer Before 40

And its Noisy Questions

“Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.”

-  “Bone” by Mary Oliver

This week, a shift away from book-related programming to a question that seems to be top of mind for many friends this summer: Should I have another child (or a first one)? Related questions too: Should I freeze eggs? What if it turns out I want a kid in 20 years? Would I think about any of this differently with another partner?

Age is to blame for the thorny urgency of these questions for many of us. I am 39; many of my friends are 39. For us, 40 feels like a jacket our parents wore for most of our childhood or adolescence that none of us is quite ready to put on.

This summer also feels different in ways that extend beyond Barbenheimer. More people I know are back to a regular travel schedule. Going to concerts in earnest. Making up for lost time by scheduling all the group trips. Responding “tired” or “busy”—or, lets be serious, “completely overwhelmed”—when asked how they are doing. This summer and its “normalness” has dug up questions about the future from the little graveyards in which we buried them during the pandemic.

If you’ve read early posts, you know that the kid decision was the longest and slowest of my life. The decision about whether we might want to try to have another is not proving to be any easier.

The pervasiveness of the question creates urgency. The time of life creates urgency. My feelings, on the other hand, do not respond well to urgency. In fact, they go numb in response to urgency. Or they get mean. My feelings work in much the same way that Mary Oliver describes her slow walk through the morning light, knowing only that they don’t and might never know. That knowing is, in fact, an unfair expectation to put on them.

I have learned this lesson before, about trying to coax and cajole. And so I release my grip on knowing. And so I plod along through this summer of almost-40, not answering the second-kid or any other big life question to anyone’s satisfaction except, on my best days, my own.

Dear reader: I’d love to know what is resonating and what you want more of from this newsletter. More interviews? More essays? More about kid decisions, or more about creative decisions? Send me a quick email (hello@logansteiner.com) and let me know.