Okay, saying these words out loud sticks in my craw. Writing them makes my fingers tremble. But here goes.
This week, I became the mother of a 30-year old.
He's a little weirded out by it, but if he thinks turning 30 is freaky, just wait until his own kid turns 30. I'm thrilled that he and his beautiful bride of six years (who is possibly turning the same age in the same week, but a lady never tells) got to take a trip to celebrate this milestone. The two of them have managed to produce the two most adorable little boys on the planet, so they deserve a get-away. But it means I'm not around to remind them that Bill Gates had made $234 million by age 30 or that the average age of retirement for NFL players is, you guessed it, 30.
Have you noticed it seems to take about ten years to get used to how old you are? I don't remember turning 30 myself, although I suppose I must have, since I recall turning 40 and 50. Mark Twain said "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it."
Remembering things that never happened can be an enormous gift for an aspiring writer, so I look forward to this aspect of aging. Perhaps my writing career will take off, provided I can commit to software whatever comes to mind before they take away my laptop for good. Meanwhile, I want to gift my son with some favorite quotes to honour his big day.
Leo Rosenberg said "First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down." (Oh dear.)
Erma Bombeck said, "As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am." (I like that kind of creativity!)
Bennett Cerf said "Middle age is when your classmates are so gray and wrinkled and bald they don't recognize you." (Poor things.)
And finally, Kurt Vonnegut said "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." (It's true.)
So to set an example for my senescent son, I refuse to let aging get me down. For one thing, it's too hard to get back up again. For another thing, in dog years, I'm already dead. So I'm actually doing quite well. It's all in your perspective. And I perceive that others have done this, therefore so can I! And so can my kids. I take comfort in knowing that as we age, the gap between my children and me gets smaller, relative to our life spans. See what you have to look forward to, guys?
Happy Birthday!
From my perspective, the whole thing was rather anticlimactic. It may just be that I'm in denial, but I think the real reason for the non-event is that I'd previously made the adjustment to being an old, responsible, boring dude when I became a father.
ReplyDeletePresumably, I'll experience what you're now going through in 2037 when I'm 56 years old. I hope at that point that I can say myself and my kids are doing as well as you and your kids are now.