Saturday I turned 42. It’s not the most original feeling to have about being middle-aged, but I really don’t know how this happened.

Two days ago I was 10. On Saturday mornings Danny Widman and I biked three miles to Wykagyl shopping center to buy Wacky Pack stickers. We sat on the curb eating pizza slices, opening pack after pack, reviewing the recent additions to our collection, making piles of the flat, pink, stale bubble gum that came with the stickers.

Yesterday I was 22. I worked as a paralegal in a law firm in San Francisco. Somehow I convinced my beautiful co-worker, A., to come with me on a hike to the ocean on a perfect, hot fall day. The air was sweet with scrub brush and ocean and whatever shampoo A. used. The sun was making its last proud stand before it started to drift off into the horizon for the winter. We spread a blanket on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. We ate. I professed my love. And to my amazement, she professed back. I remember wondering whether life would ever be so sweet.

And today I’m 42. I have pointy little nose hairs that require constant plucking. I have a mortgage that will not be paid off until I am a senior citizen. I live with four little beings that require constant feeding and other attentions—though in my case they are dogs and cats, not children. I have a wife who has what I’ve seen for so long that that I sometimes have trouble seeing her at all now. I have a law career and a writing career and excellent friends and health and money and yet I often have trouble feeling content.

42 started as a damn good day. I was hours from home with wife and dogs, on a river. I ate Captain Crunch with tri-colored crunch berries for breakfast. I sat in a hot tub until my toes puckered. Then I lumbered down to the water with an inner tube and floated beneath towering redwoods. I thought of nothing at all. I closed my eyes and remembered being at sleep away camp, face up on a sandy beach, looking at the sky, smelling pine, wondering if Sara liked me or not.

When I walked back to our rental house I decided to see if anyone had left a nice birthday message on my cell phone. Brothers, stepmother, a couple of friends all called to wish me well. Also I got a call from M., a friend with whom I’m working on a writing project. M, who did not know it was my birthday, reported that our best hope of selling our idea had dumped us. It had been a long shot to begin with, but we’d had some pretty exciting indications along the way that it might work out. I got my hopes up.

I spent the rest of the day in a miserable funk, unable to enjoy the hot tub or the river or wife, dogs, friends, food, ice cream, toasts in my honor. I didn’t even want to have birthday sex.

Monday we drove back from the river and I discovered that I had tickets to the A’s game that night. I had no date for the game. I was exhausted. I was mostly over my disappointment about the writing project, but I faced a hellish week of work. I’d paid for the tickets, though, so I figured I’d see if someone wanted to go. I left a couple of messages. The game started at 7:00, and by six no one had called. I decided to stay home. At around 6:30 my friend E. called to say he’d go to the game.

E. and I met in high school. He was a sports hero/big man on campus/genius sort of person; I was a highly social nerd. We were part of the same circle. He dated my good friend. A year after I moved to California he moved to Berkeley for graduate school. We’ve seen more or less of each other over the years, but we’ve managed to stay friends. Over the years we’ve become rather close. Usually after I see E. I’m in a far better mood than before seeing him. So, we went to the game.

It turned out to be a nearly perfect evening. E. and I ate barbeque chicken dinners and then talked through most of the game. We talked about disappointments in our careers. The Mariners went up two runs in the first inning. We talked about ambition. The A’s scored and then Seattle scored again and back and forth like that so by the eighth inning Seattle was leading 4-3. We laughed at ourselves, wondered what would become of us, shook our heads in amazement that two teenagers had become stressed-out middle-aged men.

In the bottom of the eighth Nick Swisher hit a two run homer to send the A’s ahead by a run. I was on my feet. So was E. So was every fan in the park. And we stayed up for most of the next inning. Two outs, full count, we could taste victory. Ichiro hit a single. But then closer Duchscherer picked him off at first to end the contest. We saw the throw and the tag and it certainly looked good, but for a beat we held our breath, until the ump’s arm came over his shoulder and his fist pumped toward the ground. Then we jumped for joy.

The disappointment and self-doubt I’d felt since I’d picked up that phone message a few days before, the one informing me that a project with which my ego had become entangled, was gone. Nothing was different. I’m still 42. I still have those nose hairs. I still don’t know precisely what I’m doing with my life, or if I have what it takes to make it as a writer. I still long for 10 and 22, for Danny Widman and A. But for the moment, with my pal E., cheering the A’s, I feel damn good.