Age(s)

Over the last couple years, I’ve been thinking about age more than I usually am. As you people know, I turned 50 last year, which, oddly, didn’t bother me after all – it was a beautiful summer day and I enjoyed hanging with so many of my besties who were cool enough to come out. But time stops for no one, obviously, and last year marked not only my ominous birthday but also my daughter celebrating her 9th, my husband who’s the same vintage as I am famously not celebrating his, our being in a relationship for 18 years (and married for 16), which is bizarre but lovely, my baby J. whose diapers I used to change getting married, and so on and so forth. Looking at pictures from the Nineties has become a bit surreal, and even the early 2000s not only seem but actually are a long while back.

Is that what getting old is? Looking back on things and people and feeling like all of that happened to someone else?

I still love some of the music from those days, and there’s nothing that can bring back the way we were quite like the playlist I like to call Forever Young. It’s all on there, from the Cramps to the Cure to Hüsker Dü to REM and They Might Be Giants. Ha, and the Queens of Disco too, obviously. Remember Divine? You should ;-). I love that song!

Speaking of which, my son turned 16 a couple days ago. He was gone for 4 consecutive weeks, for an internship out of town, and then his girlfriend’s parents took him snowboarding. He came back taller still, his voice has dropped some more, and he’s being more obstinate than before in his quiet powerhouse way. No wonder it made me think of ‚you think you’re a man‘ …

And that, my friends, is making me feel my own age. I can so remember myself shleping him around as a baby, and seeing him be almost as tall as my husband is whacking me over the head with the fact that we have left those times behind for good. Ugh.

My daughter is 9, and she’s beautiful, smart and a riot – but she still insists on my putting her to bed every night, and braiding her hair, and picking out clothes for her. She’s very much a little girl still. I enjoy that, a lot, but I have to say it’s getting to be such a dichotomy, being the parent of these two. When we had her, my son was only 6, so they were both kids for the longest time. And now it feels more like we’re three parents bringing up a kid together.

With my own parents out of the picture before I even became a mom, I guess I’m experiencing only one half of the typical generational handing down of wisdom, recipes, experience, history … which I’m feeling more acutely now than when I was younger. I have no significantly older friends, no mother or father figure to look up to or hit up for advice. In fact, I tend to steer clear of elderly people, probably because I found so many of them so obnoxiously patronizing when I was younger. Maybe things would be different now that I’ve passed the Rites of the Five-O, maybe not. I only hope I won’t be such a know-it-all when I’m older!

And that’s what I’ve been thinking about over this lunch break. Hope it wasn’t too deep or incoherent for you guys.

I have little else to say today other than that I’ve been working a lot, which will only ease up in May, so I’ll probably not be here a lot over the next couple weeks. I’m sure we’ll all live ;-).

And if you have anything interesting to add, I’ll be very interested to hear it, like I always am.

Here’s a few Valentine’s pics from yesterday:

Oh, and my new RayBan readers 🙂

Have a good February, everyone.