Monday, October 26, 2009

50 is not the new 30, part 1

 In two months, I turn 25x2. 

 No matter how you do the math, it's still the big FIVE-ZERO. 

 When I turned 40, my older son hand-lettered a card for me that proclaimed "Forty is a BIG number!"

 Yeah, well, fifty is an even bigger number.

 Lotta talk that fifty is the new thirty. When I was 30, I was pregnant with Mr. Card Giving Son. Fifty is definitely not the new thirty.

 Uh uh.

 Whining about the topic makes me feel petty and shallow.  Over the years, good friends have died way too young, leaving behind children. Another birthday should be celebrated, not reviled.

 I am the mother of two children whom I fiercely love and adore. I even like them too.

 Once I joked that if I turned up pregnant with number three, the doctor would have a lot of explaining to do. My mother sagely pointed out that  it would be me who would have a lot of explaining to do.  My husband’s mother had a ‘surprise’ baby at forty, which I think ‘scarred’ my poor husband for life!

 I’m not a baby person. Ask anyone who knows me. I hold them out, stiff-legged as tho I’ve never seen, or mothered one, before. I prefer ‘em walking, talking and most definitely toilet-trained.

 ‘Grandmother fever’ has certainly not infected me yet, either. My husband and I waited nearly nine years, on purpose, before we had kids. Ours are still in their teens.

 And yet…

 Turning fifty seems to slam the door shut on that part of a woman’s life: the feedingdiaperstoilettrainingpreschoolhomeroommompto-ness of it all.

 When I was in 5th grade I set my goals: I wanted to have ten children, live in Connecticut and be a writer. I’m too chubby to be a reality show star, I’ve never been to Connecticut and I’m finally at the point in my life I’ve always wanted to be at with writing.

 Embracing my gray hair has been easy, now I need to make peace with the number that goes with it.

1 comment:

  1. I feel like I've lived several different lifetimes already, from childhood to young single, to young wife and mother, to the empty nest stage. Doors have closed and opened all along the way.

    Like everyone else, I've suffered small and large joys and sorrows along the way, and gotten better at handling all of it. I think we become smarter and better as life rakes us over the coals.

    I embraced motherhood with a giant passion from the very first. I even homeschooled those kids through elementary school. As anyone who is a parent can imagine, by the time they were grown, I was READY for a change!

    Mary used to say, "You're a burnt out earth mother, Susan, there's no doubt about it." She had my number.

    Now I'm in an altogether different phase - the empty nester - very different but just as interesting.

    I say, don't just make PEACE with 50; embrace it too, along with the gray! If you look at it right, it's just another step along the way to becoming the best version of yourself.

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