Lordy, Lordy, Mommy's Turning Forty!

Family Friday

My daughter has just wielded her stellar computation skills and determined that Mommy is  fourteen years older than her first-grade teacher.  Now that forty is looming large (next week, to be exact), you'd think I'd find this sort of factoid depressing, but instead I'm feeling rather nonchalant about that Big Day.

As I've aged, I've discovered that former liabilities sometimes morph into assets.  For instance, the greasy skin that plagued my adolescent years has actually, now that two-plus decades have passed, preserved my face, staving off wrinkles and crows' feet and such. 

And for many years, all the way through college, being among the youngest of my grade cohort brought nothing but constant humiliation ("Oh no, we can't go there - Jenny can't get in!")  But now, payback seems to be dribbling in, as everyone else hits the unpleasant milestones first.  Directly observing so many peers hit forty (and beyond!) beforehand really takes the edge off somehow.  After all, not one of them has exploded yet. 

Our Western culture, with its emphasis on youth and beauty, has traditionally marked forty as the Age of Doom (at least for women). Way back in the seventies, when I was my daughter's age, my mom turned forty.  Her sister sent her a large birthday package chock-full of remedies for the aging, including Ex-Lax and Geritol.  (In case you're wondering, yes, they still manufacture Geritol, but it's not heavily marketed, probably because there's no effective way to "sell" something so profoundly linked with Old Age).  All I remember is that box and some birthday cake, but my mom has always described that day as a "real downer."  

I recall that one of my friends, upon turning twenty, moped around all day, whining "I'm halfway to forty!"  Oof, I thought at the time, that's depressing.  And now that I'm halfway to eighty, there's really no denying the onset of "middle age."  But while I've been prepping myself all year to feel depressed about this birthday, I'm feeling...nothing.  

I do think cultural norms have shifted some since my mom's day, but not necessarily in any meaningful direction.  While my mom's generation simply got depressed about aging, the Baby Boomers and Generation X have been exhorted to defy it.   Don't grow old gracefully, fight it every step of the way!  Be the sexiest grandmother on your block!  You too can look like sexy sexagenarians Susan Sarandon and Sigourney Weaver! 

In and of themselves, these developments are not bad, exactly.  Rather, it's the denial and fear lurking behind them that are problematic.  When people my age start obsessing about losing their sexiness (less Susan Sarandon, more Miss Marple), they waste a lot of energy, mental and otherwise.

I'm thinking now about a former co-worker (fifty-something at the time) who, although she was bright and educated and personable, talked about absolutely nothing but weight - her own and other people's.  If you walked past her five times during one day, here's what you would hear if you strung it all together: "…really shouldn't eat that, I don't know why they have to put those in the break room, how is anyone supposed to stay slim around here…I gained three pounds last weekend, now I really need to crack down and…Debbie in Accounting is a size zero – don't you just hate her?...well I ended up eating four of those and then I said, 'you're going to have to work that off'… and then I got up on the scale and I just couldn't believe what I was seeing so I said to the doctor that thing must be broken..."  Now that is boring.  For a woman who surely had more interesting things to say, this seems a complete waste of energy.  Do you think anyone cared?  Really? Truly?

As for me, so far, so good - I'm not depressed and not in denial.  On the Big Day itself, I'm taking off work so my tired old bones can sleep in.  As it happens, all three of my kids are off school that Friday, so I'm not anticipating that my beauty sleep will last for long.  Then it's off to Hersheypark Halloween and Dutch Wonderland for the weekend.  The kiddie rides and Halloween candy will surely make me feel young (until I get exhausted, that is). 

And if I ever launch into non-stop monologues about weight or wrinkles or gray hair, please just put me out of my misery...

Comments

[Heather]

Refreshing! I'm not forty (yet, it's looming), but I get so tired of everybody trying to deny that they're growing older. It happens, it's ok. Happy early BD!