So I sit there, with my feet dangling over the edge of the exam table, clutching my paper of current conditions and medications, wearing the little transparent "dress" that hospitals apparently feel preserves your modesty. I skimmed the sheet again and thought "This can't be right!" At the bottom of the page, as a footer, were my stats. "Age; 41" It really caught me once again how big that number looks and feels and how little it corresponds with my brain. I no longer know what age I think I am, but even on a rough day, 41 doesn't feel like it belongs to me. It's my parents, or my parent's friends, but not me.
When I look at photos of my parents in their forties, they are accompanied by nearly adult children. When I look at pictures of my husband and I, we have a kindergartner and a toddler. In the photo, they are so close to having an adult life again, and me? Not so much. And when Sister Little says "Mama, you my best fwend." it all feels like the right and true thing, but there are days, long and painful days when I want to lie down and cry with the "18 more years of this, really?" of it all.
And now a new doctor to meet. Break in. Break down in front of. Become vulnerable to. I swear that all of them are starting to look like they should be babysitting my children and that makes me feel capital-Oh Ell Dee. Please, please, please, let this doctor be gentle with my fragile and wobbly ego.
And you know what? I love my new doctor. She's real. She's funny and and just the right amount of sarcastic. She tells the truth. She puts me in the driver's seat of decisions about my body. She laughed at her own advice to up my planned exercise to five sessions weekly, eat more vegetables and drink less coffee, and to get more rest. She gets it. She heard me say, "I last slept through the night in 2001". She looked at my enormous tonsils and busted a totally inappropriate joke, which still makes me chuckle. And she's only a little older than I am.
This "forties" thing is a roller coaster for me. On one hand, I'm a whole lot freer than I've ever been. I know who I am with more clarity and I know what I'm willing to spend my time on and what just isn't worth it anymore. But I'm also in that place of wanting to make a difference and I feel that I don't even have time to make a dent. My own developmental needs are not matching up to my external reality. I want time to lay on the floor with my babies and play games, and I also want my house to myself to lay in quiet and do nothing. I want to make a difference, and I want to be liked, but I don't want to play the games anymore.
But I think I am in the throes of midlife crisis. I miss my college self, and the times I missed doing the ridiculous things because I was too serious, or too shy. I miss my twenty something self that felt like time was passing me by and my real adult life needed to start "Right Now!" (I kind of want to go back and kick her in the pants, and shake some sense into her. You don't know how good you had it sister.) And I want to remind that girl at twenty, and thirty and even thirty-five not to rush. Decisions are big and their reach is far. A paycheck is necessary, but not guaranteed happiness. A relationship is comforting, but not necessarily security. Friends are important, but not always life-long. And to a lesser degree, dessert is divine, but for the love of romaine, salad is important too.
When one of my parents turned forty, a sibling reported that his forties were the decade when everything began to fall apart. Let me assemble the evidence: I now make the same groaning noise I ridiculed my parents for when I get up in the morning. Something in my back or neck is not happy. I can't drink coffee in the evening if I want to sleep this week. Goodbye espresso for dessert circa 1994. I now hold medicine bottles at an angle and distance that are appropriate when playing trombone, but somewhat humbling in the pharmacy. And laser surgery for my eyes is now out. I'm at "the age" where, while they could correct my distance vision, my eyes are changing rapidly enough, that my close vision is going to keep me in lenses. And when I fall now, it hurts.
Take this week, I came home from work to find our aging dog had not been able to make the day indoors without accident. This is new for us. And while I found evidence sample one and two, I did not see exhibit three. Fortunately I had shoes. Unfortunately, they were clogs. I shot across the floor in a near standing position before my speed dropped and so did I, falling in nine directions simultaneously. My new reality is apparently such that I had to evaluate if the snapping sound I heard was my ankle or something now lying under me in my new, prone, besmirched, and aching vantage point. Fortunately it was a crayon and not a skeletal unit, but when did my brain make this switch? Who gave the sign?
So, I'm not really complaining, because being 41 certainly beats the alternative of not being 41, but I have this amnesia-quality recollection of how I got here so quickly. And regret that I can't go back and do some things over. I think I would be smarter and more observant if given the chance. I certainly would have turned on a light before going into the family room last Friday night ;)
When I look at photos of my parents in their forties, they are accompanied by nearly adult children. When I look at pictures of my husband and I, we have a kindergartner and a toddler. In the photo, they are so close to having an adult life again, and me? Not so much. And when Sister Little says "Mama, you my best fwend." it all feels like the right and true thing, but there are days, long and painful days when I want to lie down and cry with the "18 more years of this, really?" of it all.
And now a new doctor to meet. Break in. Break down in front of. Become vulnerable to. I swear that all of them are starting to look like they should be babysitting my children and that makes me feel capital-Oh Ell Dee. Please, please, please, let this doctor be gentle with my fragile and wobbly ego.
And you know what? I love my new doctor. She's real. She's funny and and just the right amount of sarcastic. She tells the truth. She puts me in the driver's seat of decisions about my body. She laughed at her own advice to up my planned exercise to five sessions weekly, eat more vegetables and drink less coffee, and to get more rest. She gets it. She heard me say, "I last slept through the night in 2001". She looked at my enormous tonsils and busted a totally inappropriate joke, which still makes me chuckle. And she's only a little older than I am.
This "forties" thing is a roller coaster for me. On one hand, I'm a whole lot freer than I've ever been. I know who I am with more clarity and I know what I'm willing to spend my time on and what just isn't worth it anymore. But I'm also in that place of wanting to make a difference and I feel that I don't even have time to make a dent. My own developmental needs are not matching up to my external reality. I want time to lay on the floor with my babies and play games, and I also want my house to myself to lay in quiet and do nothing. I want to make a difference, and I want to be liked, but I don't want to play the games anymore.
But I think I am in the throes of midlife crisis. I miss my college self, and the times I missed doing the ridiculous things because I was too serious, or too shy. I miss my twenty something self that felt like time was passing me by and my real adult life needed to start "Right Now!" (I kind of want to go back and kick her in the pants, and shake some sense into her. You don't know how good you had it sister.) And I want to remind that girl at twenty, and thirty and even thirty-five not to rush. Decisions are big and their reach is far. A paycheck is necessary, but not guaranteed happiness. A relationship is comforting, but not necessarily security. Friends are important, but not always life-long. And to a lesser degree, dessert is divine, but for the love of romaine, salad is important too.
When one of my parents turned forty, a sibling reported that his forties were the decade when everything began to fall apart. Let me assemble the evidence: I now make the same groaning noise I ridiculed my parents for when I get up in the morning. Something in my back or neck is not happy. I can't drink coffee in the evening if I want to sleep this week. Goodbye espresso for dessert circa 1994. I now hold medicine bottles at an angle and distance that are appropriate when playing trombone, but somewhat humbling in the pharmacy. And laser surgery for my eyes is now out. I'm at "the age" where, while they could correct my distance vision, my eyes are changing rapidly enough, that my close vision is going to keep me in lenses. And when I fall now, it hurts.
Take this week, I came home from work to find our aging dog had not been able to make the day indoors without accident. This is new for us. And while I found evidence sample one and two, I did not see exhibit three. Fortunately I had shoes. Unfortunately, they were clogs. I shot across the floor in a near standing position before my speed dropped and so did I, falling in nine directions simultaneously. My new reality is apparently such that I had to evaluate if the snapping sound I heard was my ankle or something now lying under me in my new, prone, besmirched, and aching vantage point. Fortunately it was a crayon and not a skeletal unit, but when did my brain make this switch? Who gave the sign?
So, I'm not really complaining, because being 41 certainly beats the alternative of not being 41, but I have this amnesia-quality recollection of how I got here so quickly. And regret that I can't go back and do some things over. I think I would be smarter and more observant if given the chance. I certainly would have turned on a light before going into the family room last Friday night ;)
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