How did I get to be old without ever feeling like an adult?
It seems ironic. As a kid, just about everybody is older than you. And when you are the "baby" in the family, and a "late" baby at that, all your relatives are older. Your cousins are older, heck your cousins' kids are older than you.
I am the baby in a family of three girls. My sisters are 6 years and 15 years older than me. Now I know most people who have older sisters and brothers always look up to their "big sister/brother" but mine truly were years ahead of me in everything. If your big sister or big brother is only two or three years older than you, by the time you are in your late teens or twenties, it has all evened out. You're both in college or out on your own working. The two years' age difference has essentially vanished.
But for me, my sisters were doing things I wouldn't be able to do for years or decades. Getting to stay up late, dating, wearing makeup, going to college, getting married and or having a baby. One sister got married when I was five and had a baby when I was 10. They have always seemed "grown up." I thought someday I, too would seem grown up.
My mistake.
So even though now I am 47 (three years away from 50 has got to be grown up, hasn't it?), I rarely feel like I am an adult. Yeah, intellectually I know I am. I've been driving since I was 16, voting since I was 18 and I even got married when I was 19. Truthfully, I think I felt more grown up then. But my logical brain looks back and knows I was still a kid.
So why is it that I only feel grown up when a bag-boy calls me "M'am?" Well, actually I just feel old when they do that. I felt old the day I realized that kids who could drive could be my own.
I started feeling really old when my doctors became younger than me. Aren't doctors supposed to be fat-bellied old grey-haired guys that you can't relate to? Mine always were. Then all of a sudden they are your peers, and you wonder how in the world you're going to take advice from someone who probably grew up on the Brady Bunch just like you. You know their secrets. God forbid you ever knew one of them in grade school. A man I reconnected with at my 30th high school reunion is now a cardiac specialist. (Well, I imagine he's been a cardiac specialist for a good 20 years.) I sat across from this kid in 8th grade while he burped his way through the alphabet! Am I supposed to believe he's out there saving the lives of his unsuspecting patients? Well, in fact, he did come across as a very intelligent man who cares deeply about what he does. And I think he even has trouble feeling like an adult because he admitted that his mom still calls him to ask if he's wearing a sweater. In the middle of a consult.
This whole "adult" thing is a lie our parents perpetrated on us. I wonder now if they ever felt "grown up" or they just did all those grown up things to make us feel like powerless little kids and just do what they said we should do. Like eat brussell sprouts.
I find myself occasionally realizing that to anyone under 30, (40?) I look like an "adult." There is that momentary feeling of power. I've used it sparingly. Like when some teen boys were using foul language at the park within earshot of my little girl. "Hey there are little kids here, please stop using that language," said in the most I-am-old-enough-to-be-your-mother voice and death rays piercing from my eyes. Teen boys are a little tough, but it definitely works with some of them.
So, this means I use my daughter like a shield to the world emblazoned with the crest "Ego sum a matris , proinde ego sum adultus." (Roughly translates to "I am a mother, therefore I am an adult.) And since I didn't become a mother until I was 40, I have spent many, many years, not feeling like an adult.
Inibi est forsit.
(Therein lies the problem. I am having so much fun with the online Latin translator.)
Maybe if I'd done the kid thing earlier, I would have felt like an adult sooner and gotten used to the idea. But when a little one first comes along at 40, you're already on the downhill slide to "old." And keeping up with them just exacerbates that.
Maybe I've just forgotten that at some point I felt like an adult. I already have those "senior moments" every day when I can't remember why I stepped into a room. Or a common word (like "dog" ) is on the tip of my tongue and won't come off. Or trying to write a blog when the cat distracts me and I forget the absolutely brilliant ending I just thought of.
Don't get me wrong--I know that 50 is not really "old." (Although any high school senior will tell you differently. But what do they know?) But I am feeling old. And what I feel is certainly my truth.
Two upsides to being the baby in this family:
1.) My sisters are excellent canaries in the coal mine, so to speak. (Or lab rats ahead of me in an experiment.) Since they are near-genetic copies of me, but 6 and 15 years older, I have a glimpse into my future. Much is good--they both look good and still have great skin--apparently Pearsons take a long time to wrinkle. One is vegetarian and one is not. So I even have a little barometer for how that difference is going. (I am vegan, though and my veggie sis still eats plenty of cholesteral-laden cheese!) I have a few clues about what I should or should not be doing in order to still be able to do what I want to do when I am 50+ and 60+.
2.) Since they are getting older, hopefully they will start forgetting those awful stories about me they trot out at family gatherings. Yet, my mom is 80+ and must have a real special healthy spot in her brain for storing those things. They seem to pop out now in front of my friends and neighbors. Like I said, I still don't feel like an adult.
If you believe in the theory that females are born with all their "eggs" then you must also realize that half your DNA has been walking the earth since the day your mother was born, and essentially, you are as old as your mom. My mom is 85.
I need a nap.
