I don’t want another surprise party.

Which is just one reason why a few weeks ago, when my husband, Carl, called while I was
walking our dog, B. B. King, to the dog park and asked what I wanted to do for my birthday
this year, I politely said, “Baby, let’s try to figure out how to get our second wind.”

At first Carl high-pitch chuckled like he was a soprano or something, then he said, “Will we
need a boat?”

I chuckled right back, even though I was serious as a heart attack.

“Don’t you worry, Miss Lo. I’ve got you covered,” he said as he hung up.

I knew he didn’t really get my drift. What I meant was, since we both had more days behind
us than we have ahead of us, how about we try to figure out what more we can do to pump
up the volume? It’s not that our life is boring. Well, maybe it is, a little. But even though we
don’t do very many things that generate excitement, I still love him more than my
Twizzlers! Carl is a retired contractor who refuses to retire, and after thirty years of all work
and no play selling hair and beauty products in two stores too many, I don’t exactly qualify
as a thrill a minute either.

I released B. B. King’s leash inside the dog park, but he just stood there shivering, as if he
were waiting to be invited to participate in some activity that didn’t require him to run or
jump. In human years, he and I will soon be the same age: sixty-eight. His whiskers and
eyebrows are peppered with gray, but unlike me, B. B. doesn’t dye his hair. He is our third
German shepherd and I don’t want to think about how long it will be until he doesn’t want
to, or can’t, hop in the back seat of my Volvo station wagon, which I will drive until, like me,
it stops running.

I sat on the green metal bench and watched him sniff a friendly chocolate poodle. I realized
I was hoping and praying I wasn’t going to have to sit through yet another lackluster party
where nobody even thinks about dancing until they hear a song you have to be damn near
seventy to remember, which I suppose now includes me. And that’s if you call doing the
cha-cha-cha in flats or espadrilles or two-inch wedges with rubber soles to a beat they all
hear differently, dancing. I don’t. I watch music videos on YouTube. I find myself rocking
my future-size-twelve hips, swinging and swaying my shoulders and popping my fingers to
the likes of “Single Ladies” or “Uptown Funk” by that little cutie Bruno Mars until I have to
wipe my forehead. I have not forgotten how to dance. In fact, sometimes, Carl will sit in his
leather recliner, lean way back, and just watch me swirl around in my three-inch heels,
which I wear to work every day because I like to appear glamorous. In those moments I
feel pretty and sexy and forty. Carl just nods his head like he’s agreeing and pops his
fingers until the smile on his luscious lips begins to disappear. Then he might hold up his
index finger, suggesting that I give him a minute but don’t stop dancing, slowly push
himself up to a standing position, and limp down the hallway to take one of his little blue
pills.

Oh, hell. Here I go again. Meandering. I’m just going to have to stop apologizing for it,
because from what I’ve learned reading my AARP newsletter, this is only the beginning.
Though, truth be told, forgetting what I was talking about and going off on tangents isn’t
completely new to me. Back in my twenties, I smoked a lot of reefer with my friends. We’d
all sit in a circle on the floor on giant pillows and have deep conversations about the
purpose of life or something having to do with God or how we were going to change the
world, but then we’d all stop talking because we were suddenly mesmerized by the lava
lamp. Then somebody would realize they were one step away from freaking out and would
jump to a standing position in order to snap out of it, and then they’d ask: “What the f***
were we just talking about again?” And since not one of us had a clue, we’d just start
passing the joint until the next philosophical inquiry overtook our minds.

Thank God I got tired of thinking about things that didn’t matter and realized I liked the way
I felt when I wasn’t under the influence of anything. And when I didn’t like how I felt, it was
a hell of a lot easier to figure out how to deal with it when my head was clear.

Anyway, now I’m a certified senior citizen, and my mind has earned the right to go
wherever it wants, so I decided that when I can’t remember something, it must not have
been that important anyway. But sometimes, when I do remember, it feels like an
accomplishment.

Like right now, I’m remembering last year’s dull party. My feelings were hurt because both
my twin sister, Odessa, and my one and only daughter, Jalecia, had been no-shows. Now,
Odessa is a bitch and proves it on a weekly basis. Like I said, she’s my twin. But there are
two things about us that make us special. First of all, we were born in different years. I’m
December 31 and she’s January 1. We are also technically only half sisters, even though
we’re fraternal twins. Apparently Ma was a hot number back in the day and slept with two
different fellas only days apart. This probably explains why we are nothing alike and why
we’re not as chummy as most twins. Ma didn’t bother to tell us this until we were in junior
high, but by then we weren’t interested in who our daddies were.

It’s a fact that Odessa has been jealous of me for years. Jealous I was crowned the first
black homecoming queen at our predominantly white high school fifty years ago, even
though I wasn’t pretty then and I’m not pretty now. Jealous I know how to make myself
appear to be more attractive than I am, and occasionally still get honked at. Jealous of my
being a successful entrepreneur. She has never once come into my Pasadena store. Never
once given me a compliment, no matter how nice I might look. I didn’t know our lives were
a contest. I love her, but in all honesty, I don’t really like her, and if she wasn’t my sister I
probably wouldn’t have anything to do with her.

Right before Odessa took early retirement at fifty from her job as a policewoman for the
City of Pasadena, her husband left her for a forty-three-year-old ex–Lakers cheerleader who
could still do the splits. Odessa wiped him out and bought a house that seemed purposely
much bigger than mine up in the hills of Altadena. Then she started going to church like
some people go to AA. Her personality changed after the Holy Ghost struck her, but she
doesn’t seem to see how unhappy she still is or acknowledge that maybe God intentionally
leaves some gaps for us to fill in. She started acting like she would get electrocuted from a
mere whiff of alcohol. Before she retired, she lived in bars and just sat around waiting to
arrest somebody, but now she won’t go inside any establishment where liquor is poured.

My daughter, on the other hand, has the opposite relationship to alcohol. She’s had an on--
again, off-again love affair with alcohol and lately with some of those designer pain pills for
people who aren’t in pain. I fired her from my store for stealing from me. Me, her own
mother, who gave her a job because she hasn’t figured out what to do with her life after
forty years. That is apparently my fault because I had a job and then a business and then a
divorce, so her failure to launch is payback for my not having been present enough or
generous enough. But I couldn’t be everywhere at once, and I’m tired of being punished for
it. She didn’t come to my party and hasn’t spoken to me in more than a year.

All I can say is thank God for sons, or I should say son, since I only have one. Jackson is
Jalecia’s younger brother and the product of my second marriage. He wasn’t at my party
last year either, but he had a good reason. He lives in Tokyo with his wife, Aiko, who had
just given birth to premature twin daughters. They still needed a few more months to grow
and they needed their daddy there.

My BFFs were there, though. Lucky. Sadie. Korynthia. Even Poochie made the trip from
Vegas. I grew up with all of them. Occasionally we all get on one another’s nerves.
Sometimes to the point that our friendships get temporarily annulled. But we always come
running back because we have loved one another longer than some of us have loved the
men in our lives.

Excerpted from It's Not All Downhill From Here by Terry McMillan Copyright © 2020 by Terry McMillan. Excerpted by
permission of Ballantine Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without
permission in writing from the publisher.