I am older than Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey or Monica ever were.
I'm could run in the next Presidential election.
Hell, I could have run in the LAST Presidential election.
My knees ache a little when it's damp outside.
I watch shows on Lifetime (and enjoy them!)
and have actually said “I don't understand ___insert popular band name here___'s appeal to kids.”
Up next? Yelling at them to “Get off my lawn!”
This is what I look like on a regular day. Today, in fact:
And tomorrow, I turn 36 years old.
I'm closer to 40 than 30. I remember my parents turning 40; I'm turning into an age where I knew them. I see photos of my mom at 25, her young, gorgeous face looking at me from the past. She's lovely, and I know that I know her, but I didn't know her. I didn't know the Hertz rental car clerk, or the Newport Creamery ice cream scooper. That version of her is someone I never knew. But now, I myself am becoming an age where I've known her.
The Scout leader, the Room Mom, the pushing-40 version of her.
So this is the me that Max will know. He'll be aware that I was an art student, and a graphic designer, maybe he'll even learn about the previously married me, but he won't know those versions of me. He'll know this one. The startup employee who loves her job. With the lines and the splotches (I refuse to call them age spots!) With the 2 plain old earrings instead of the 9 piercings of my teenage years.
It's easy to start feeling old, as I sit here on the verge of midlife.
For as long as I can remember, midlife has been something far off. It's something for old people, with midlife crises and sagging bits. But really? Isn't that just what you make it? How about this:
At 36:
Julia Child moved to Paris and started cooking.
Benjamin Franklin invented the Franklin stove.
And ahem? Jon Hamm became Don Draper.
As for me at 36, I still have no grey hair.
I'm (very close to being) in the best shape of my life.
And I can still be this woman too:
And excuse me, but I think she's kinda hot.
“Middle age,” no matter what age at which you think it begins? Isn't a death sentence.
It isn't a set of instructions that you now have to follow.
It's whatever you want it to be.
I need to thank the amazing women of Generation Fabulous for inspiring this post. Because you're all amazing and I adore you. And when I'm at a kindergarten party next fall with mamas a full ten years younger than me? YOU will be my cheerleaders, if only in my brain.
