On The Middle Ages

I want to talk about having a point of view and about how we come to see the world through our own unique set of eyeglasses. But I just can't tonight. I have sudden onset of adult attention deficit disorder which scrambled my brain like a half dozen eggs.

I can't think straight. That's what will happen to you if seventy-five percent of your children are ill, but only vaguely under the weather so that they merely behave like hooligans, shrieking and chasing and then whining and crying when they fall and whack their heads on the couch. And then you start to regret keeping the 7-year old home from school with his sore throat because, really, he seems fine, though sniffling and coughing from time to time, usually in the direction of a baby's bottle.

And my cat seems ill. I need to make an appointment for her to see the vet tomorrow. I also need to make an appointment to have my mop hair cut and I want an appointment on Saturday, but I can't make the appointment because I have some kind of mental disorder which makes me pathologically reluctant to dial the number and make an appointment for any reason, no matter how important or mundane. But my colorist is coming on Friday night and surely, surely the planets will align and my stylist (I can't remember her name, it's been so long) will have an appointment just for me on Saturday. At one-ish, so I will look tremendously stunning for my birthday dinner.

I'm middle-aged. This didn't used to bother me, but then again, I didn't used to be middle-aged. When I turned twenty-six, I was despondent, but that was because I wanted a fetus in my uterus and my uterus was uncooperative, to say the least. So, I was working at an insurance company in the correpondence department, earning a fairly decent salary, enjoying flex-time, excellent healthcare benefits, including dental and eyecare . . . and yet, I couldn't stop crying in the bathroom because all I wanted was to be a Mom with a capital "M." I thought all my dreams would come true if only I were parenting an impressionable infant who adored me.

And then we adopted twins who had the temerity to throw fits in my general direction and to poop on the carpet when I had my back turned and to disregard my preference for sleeping past 7 a.m. I turned out to still have issues, financial issues, identity crisis issues, loneliness issues, and bad-hair issues. I know. How can anyone be so short-sighted? But I was. I pinned all my hopes and dreams on a drooling human being who would be dependent on me for its twenty-four hour entertainment needs.

Ha.

Where was I? Oh, so when I turned twenty-six, two years after my dad died, two years into the black hole of infertility, two years into a job that bored me silly, I was a mite depressed. No other birthday has bothered me. But as I mentioned, back then I wasn't middle-aged. And now I am.

My mother is only twenty-two years older than me, which sounds like a lot, right? Two decades and a little more . . . yet, I can remember twenty-two years ago and I'm scared because it doesn't seem so distant. Twenty-two years ago, I was in my first year of college. I remember the weather (brittle cold, windy, trees starkly naked), the clothes I wore (a blue dress with a ruffled neckline that I constantly tugged up), the status of my hair (permed and shoulder length), the weird taste of the chocolate shakes in the Student Union. I remember my shoes (black low heels with interlocking circles of leather that were slightly too big and slipped off if I walked too fast), my friend's braces (Wilma*joy, only seventeen and overly enthusiastic), the round moon at night whose beauty made me want to weep while I strolled back to my dorm from the library.

Twenty-two years is not that long. And my mother? She just got a cane. A cane! Her lifetime of avoiding physical exertion and neglecting her body while buying yet another pair of lime green ballet flats with matching purse has caught up with her. She winces when she walks. She unbends slowly when she stands, taking as long as a drawbridge to stretch upright.

I do not want to be her. I want to be energetic and physically fit and able to run up the stairs and stoop down to pick up a fork off the floor. I know I can't do much about the crepepaper state of my eyelids or the age spots (age spots!)on my hands. Age is inevitable--preferable, really, when you consider the alternative--but I'm a little irritated by the physical changes which are happening without my permission. (Yes, I'm talking about you spider veins!)

I wished today that I could see myself side by side, standing next to the sixteen year old me and the twenty-five year old me. I judged myself so harshly then, measured myself against impossible standards and then berated myself for not meeting them. I'd like to apologize to the me of the past.

Now? Now I try to be gentle. I try not to criticize myself for things I cannot control. I stand up straight and welcome another birthday and I would be extremely pleased if only I could once and for all settle on a grown-up hairstyle which would take into account both my natural curls, my unruly cowlicks, my desire for straight hair and which would eliminate my default look, which we liked to call "Weary Cocker Spaniel."

On the other hand, my grandmother is ninety-nine and if I live that long, I'm not even half-way there.

But I still need a hairstyle.