Regular readers of this blog already know I’m 41. Until just recently I thought turning 42 might be kind of cool because then I’d have reached the Douglas Adams zenith, the Answer To Life The Universe And Everything. I had no idea how accurate that sentiment would turn out to be.
I say this because I’ve already begun to fall apart. Not in a leprous way… I’m not dropping bits and pieces of fingers behind like a trail of breadcrumbs. It’s more like a machine that has not been well maintained and that is beginning to grind down on the inside. Things that have ticked along with almost clocklike regularity are no longer reliable – and in fact are beginning to cause problems. It’s not that I’m going to miss that monthly visit from Aunt Flo. In my opinion she could have taken a long hike off a deep, steep cliff as soon as my second son was born. It’s the other stuff.
Take yesterday, for example. I was at the office (a.k.a. the coffee shop with the lovely scenic view of the backside of McDonalds) clacking away. It was hard enough to focus before the young mom came in with her two little boys. For some reason taking a thought to its conclusion yesterday was like chasing a rabbit through thick fog. I heard her order one hot chocolate to split between the two of them and I felt a little pang of nostalgia. This is exactly what I used to do with my boys on days when the walls were squeezing in and I needed to get out of the house. Then I made the mistake of looking toward their table. One of the boys caught me looking and grinned at me. They were just gorgeous. Brown eyes and blonde hair and impish grins. Well-behaved and sweet and all boy just looking for something to climb.
Oh. My. Giddy Aunt. I’m getting all verklempt all over again.
This sponge cake soaked in syrup response from a woman who was quite sure until she was 31 that children were of no interest at all. (At that point, however, the biological clock which had never uttered so much as a tiny “click” suddenly went off with the urgency of an air-raid klaxon.) As a teenager I only took babysitting jobs because 1) I lived way out in the middle of nowhere so there were no neighbors I could do yard work for, and 2) if the job was in town I would be able to watch MTV. Cooing over other people’s kids is so out of character for me!
I seriously wanted to call my mom up and ask her what was wrong with me but I already knew the answer and was quite sure I was too choked up to ask a coherent question to start with. And trying to explain my emotionally fragile state to my husband? I could have been speaking French for as much sense as it made to him. If someone wanted to make me cry all they would have had to do was stroke my hair and tell me “everything’s gonna be ok, sweetie”, and I would have been a quivering mass of Jello. On the other hand, if they were suicidal all they would have had to do was piss me off and I’d have taken that whole “how do I want to die” problem right out of their hands.
The worst part is feeling so close to the edge of out of control. I don’t like it here. I’m thinking about self-medicating with dark chocolate and raspberries.





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