I sprained my hiney back in August . . . .
Oh, and I'm 42.
Yes, friends, even though I am the mother of a toddler, I am middle aged.
Despite what you've been told, 40 isn't the new 30. It's still 40, and you're still just as old as your parents were when they were 40 . . .
. . . which means that your parents were a lot more fun and interesting than you thought they were . . . and a lot less old that you thought too.
But being fun and not being past-it doesn't reset the aging process. Julianne Moore, who according to imdb.com is 52 years old, recently took more than casual, comical offense at being called middle aged. Does she anticipate living to 150?
Hollywood wants us to believe that wrinkles, stretch marks and bulges are evil. Hollywood also wants us to buy into the notion that adolescence can extend even to your late 30s. (Or is that just Judd Apatow who wants that?) My husband rightly points out that this is why people like Juilanne Moore blanch at being called middle aged. Middle aged women don't get good parts. In an industry that prizes youth, being middle aged is a career killer.
In the TV show, Slings & Arrows, one of the female characters -- a professional stage actress, a middle aged one -- tells a young actress that, in Shakespearean theater, the actress's progression is thus:
"This is the life of an actress. You play the ingenues, you play the queens, you play the dreaded Nurse [in Romeo and Juliet], then you retire . . . . Then you sit there in the dining room eating rice pudding and hearing endless tales of life on the wicked stage. And you realized that you never really lived at all, you just pretended. Is that what you really want?"
If that is the life of an actress, I'm glad to be a lawyer. Fame and adoration in the now cannot be worth such emptiness and regret in the end. Even if it's an exaggeration of the truth, there is no avoiding the truism that our pop culture values youth more highly than it ought to.
Still, when I was having so much trouble getting pregnant at ages 37 through 39, I resented the hell out of the 40-something actresses having babies and pretending that the offspring were genetically their own. My doctors all insisted that the vast majority of these women (especially those over 45) used donor eggs. I didn't resent that they did it. I resented the message they were sending to the non-rich and famous by not acknowledging that they did it. Their (what I perceived to be) casual use of other women's DNA to continue the illusion of youthful fecundity really pissed me off. And I feel like it misleads the populous into believing that it is easy to get pregnant in middle age. So easy, in fact, that middle age isn't middle age anymore.
But despite how much fun we're having, how great we look, how much energy we have, and how happy we are, I think a healthy dose of realism is necessary. It's part of that wisdom that comes with age.
We are mortal. The flesh fails us. This mortality weighs heavily on The Working Dad and me, having a child who is not yet two. We delight in him, but we are conscious that when he is our age, we will be elderly, indeed (we hope, and not the alternative). Being conscious that life is short and time is fleeting makes parenting a joy and makes family, not work, the central figure in our lives. It is the ability to see the end, from this vantage point in the middle, that makes the present so sweet. I'm not sure I would have had this kind of appreciation for my very brief time with my son as a boy if I were not middled aged. We have him for 18 years. I had done 18 years twice and then some before he was ever born. It brings a perspective that a first time mom at 24 just cannot have.
So, in the middle, here, our limbs aren't as strong, our eye-sight not as keen, our internal parts -- ovaries, hearts, knee and hip joints, stomachs -- all are starting to show the signs of decades of useful employment. You know what else shows those signs? Our smiles. Our slightly crinkled eyes. Our knowing glances. Our, cliche or not, wonderfully bewizened brains.
The character Sally on Coupling may think that "age bring you more to shave" (and she may be a little right about that), but age also bring patience, peace and experience. We have seen the world. We have lived in it. And we know how to work it, now. These are good things!
And, being middle aged, not only do we know how life works, but we have (actuarially, at least) a whole other half of our lives to live well and wisely. Any regrets we have, we still have time to mend them. Any places we've not visited, we still have time to travel. Any adventure unpursued can still be embarked upon.
And beyond all that existential stuff, I'm just better at stuff in my middle age than in times past. For instance, I'm a way better cook at 42 than in my youth . . . way better. And I like being good at stuff.
There's a long road ahead after 40. It's not as long as the one we stood on when we were 20. But now we see well enough -- with our progressive lenses -- to see the potholes and caution signs we were blind to in our youths.
We are not old. We are the middle. And the middle can be a hell of a lot of fun.
Middle Aged Woman Wearing New No-Line Bifocal Glasses
(Doesn't she rock out loud?)
