My birthday is tomorrow. Rod has something planned, something that a couple of my friends are involved in, but I haven’t been told details. Normally I do not like surprises, and this makes me slightly uneasy. But—not enough to demand the facts. No, for FORTY, I will allow a little suspense.
Also, today after I go listen to the kids in Ruby’s class read and sniffle, some friends and I are going for birthday nail treatments and lunch. But Rod had that a cat that swallowed a canary look on his face when he was leaving this morning, so I’m also worried there may be more to today’s plans also. Do you figure Shaun Cassidy is going to show up or something? Should I put on more makeup?
If you haven’t guessed, I read a bunch of other blogs. It’s pretty easy, with a service like Bloglines, to skim through a lot. Anyway, one of my knitting favorites is this one, written by someone else who just joined Club 40. I enjoyed reading her look back, so I thought I’d write one myself. Unfortunately for you, I am longer-winded than she is. But here goes anyway:
1989: I start the year studying abroad in Spain and think about staying. The lifestyle works for me and I love it there, but in the end I just can’t see it, or maybe I’m too chicken. There are a couple of cute Spanish boys and one disastrous Italian, but mostly I take long walks and write letters to Rod. It is clear that I am way more in love with him than he is with me. I come back and work all summer, then senior year starts: exams, as many job interviews as I can finagle, and lots of what-do-I-want-to-do-next navel gazing.
1990: The navel gazing continues. I start my internship at the Protocol Alliance, but keep looking for a job, as it’s not a permanent deal. There are a lot of papers to write and exams to take. Rod and I are happy except when he is emotionally unavailable and I am cranky and mean about not knowing where we, or my life in general, are heading. Then I graduate (jobless) and move in with friends. I do lots of temp work and keep interviewing for jobs. Soon, I get one—but I can tell it is a big mistake by the second day. Within a couple of months, I’m back to temping. By year’s end, though, the Protocol Alliance hires me. Employed at last! I go to Hawaii with my mom and my sisters.
1991: I get my own tiny studio apartment. I work a lot. Rod graduates and moves in. I decide not to take a CIA job in Washington. We move to slightly bigger digs. I take a trip to Chile with my mom.
1992: In a move unanticipated by me, Rod and I get engaged in January and married in May. We move again. “Married” is a bigger deal mentally than I was expecting, and the adjustment phase isn’t always pretty, but I once I calm down, I realize I am simply very happy. I yank out my first gray hair.
1993: I am still in newly-wedded bliss, and working very long hours in the protocol world. There is a major re-organization at my office and I remember spending our wedding anniversary weekend in deep stress about it. I undertake a major diet and exercise plan. My grandfather dies that summer, and it’s my first real experience with death.
1994: Work, work, more work. The book I put together at work gets published. I teach protocol seminars. I start to think that if marriage is so much more fun that I had figured, maybe having a kid or two wouldn’t be so bad, either? Rod is not receptive to this thought. I think this is the year we went to London for Thanksgiving with my mom. Or maybe it’s the year my dad remarries. Or was that 1993?
1995: Work, work, more work. I co-host a national protocol conference. Rod and I buy our first house and tackle major renovations ourselves with the help of a couple of good friends. This sucks up all available free time and money, and there is paint in my hair until 1998, but I learn a lot about building and fixing.
1996: Major renovations wind down and we finally move into our house. I am working very long hours and starting to think about various graduate school programs. I join a knitting guild and get more productive on that front. I start another major diet and exercise program, spending thousands of hours at Weight Watchers, exercising, shopping, planning, and accounting for calories. Mom and I go to Maui.
1997: I am still working a lot, working out a lot, and working on the house as we find time. Rod finally finishes his PhD and starts working for Giant Conglomerate. I think he will soon be disillusioned, but to my astonishment he really does like his job. We take a celebratory trip to some beach in Mexico. I bravely bring up the idea of having a child someday; Rod decides he can think about it, eventually, but, really, aren’t things fine the way they are? Yes, I must say, they are.
1998: The big diet and exercise plan gradually falls apart. Work is especially nuts this year. Rod travels a ton for work, and when he is around, we take a lot of weekend trips. My grammy dies, and I am sad over this for a long time. Heck, I still am.
1999: I still can’t make up my mind about grad school, and am working very long hours. We had some good parties and some nice little vacations this year. Mom and I go to Belgium. It was a lot like 1998, I suppose, except my back quits working in the fall, and my acquaintance with severe and chronic pain begins.
2000: I am starting to burn out at my job. Back pain is taking over a lot of my time and energy. I am also starting to worry about my mom’s health, as I see signs of big trouble that weren’t there before. I still want a baby, and Rod is still cool about the whole concept. I start law school, and manage to negotiate part-time hours at work. I take Rod to Paris and it is almost as romantic having him there as I dreamed it would be when I studied there in college.
2001: Work, school, work, school, backache, backache, backache. Rod and I take a vacation with my mom, which is fun, when we aren’t struggling to keep her blood sugar up to a functioning level and worrying about how far she can or can’t walk. A week after we get back, I realize I’m pregnant. Whoops. I stress over how this’ll completely destroy an otherwise grand marriage, how I’ll manage single parenthood. But then, false alarm, I’m just having a miscarriage instead. Sometime during all that crying, Rod convinces me that he’s truly okay with having a baby and we can try again. I don’t let 9/11 deter me, Rod, once his mind is made up, cooperates happily, and on or about September 30, egg and sperm collide and Ruby gets her start. I am one cheerily worried pregnant woman the rest of the year.
2002: My other grandmother dies. Rod and I celebrate our tenth anniversary. I conclude that I can comfortably handle work and school, but not work, school AND baby. So, I stop working, just before my due date in June. Ruby is born, and my heart grows three sizes. The last half of the year, I am an exhausted lovesick zombie with the baby blues, a flabby gut like I never had before, and leaky nipples. Thankfully, babies are good for the social life, and with Ruby, we meet a ton of wonderful people.
2003: I go back to law school, now full time. I work as a mediator and clerk for a judge. This is interesting and valuable work, good for the ego, and unfortunately rather different from actually practicing law. I also return to the Protocol Alliance for some temp work that pays better than the courts do. I keep stressing about how my mom is doing, or not doing. Ruby grudingly starts sleeping through the night. Rod and I open the debate over whether or when to have another baby, since the first one is so fabulous and expensive and exhausting. In late autumn, we agree to try again in mid-2004. Unfortunately, those progesterone-only birth control pills don’t always work the way you’d think, my mom babysits the night after Christmas, and I manage to get one little extra-special Christmas present. So much for the grand plan.
2004: A week into the New Year I figure out that I’m pregnant ahead of our schedule. Luckily, I’ll finish law school in the spring. Baby Carl gives me a couple of scares along the way, but he hangs in through finals, graduation, bar review, and bar exam, and is born perfectly healthy an hour before his due date. The end of the year is a haze of sleep deprivation and sibling rivalry, plus house shopping , as we conclude we need a bigger place. I start a blog in an effort to keep track of and share various child-related details, and it turns out I like having an outlet for some of the random things floating through my head.
2005: A conversation I had while nursing Carl at a party in late 2004 leads to a lawyer job, and my year sort of falls apart from there. Work is great at first, then it gets more and more and more stressful. I decide I am not cut out to do litigation in the long run, but I can’t figure out what I should do instead. We move to a new house and have trouble selling the old one. Rod is gone on business trips for months at a time, Carl has trouble adjusting to childcare and is constantly too sick to go there anyway, plus he has serious trouble learning to eat solids. Both of our elderly cats die, but separately.
2006: It is clear to me at this point that work is making me miserable, although my home situation is slowly improving as Carl stays well more and Rod travels less. I start pulling back from work, and work apparently feels the same way about me. My first mammogram goes badly and I get a biopsy, an unwelcome run-in with mortality. Then my mom unexpectedly dies. I don’t recommend this, and if your parents are still alive, you should keep them that way. The end of the year revolves around estate administration and grief. I break the rule about not spending any money you inherit right away and we buy the house next door, as an investment and to give us room to expand in the future.
2007: Children keep me very busy. I chair a big fundraiser for Ruby’s school and serve as room parent. We go to Kauai and sprinkle what’s left of Mom in the Pacific. I finally get the details of her estate wrapped up in the fall. I develop a heel spur that’s just as crippling in its own way as back pain.
2008: Children still keep me very busy, and I am still doing a lot of school volunteer work, with another year as gala co-chair and room parent for Ruby’s class. I mount another big attempt at weight-loss and improved physical fitness. My heel spurred foot gets a little better towards year’s end. I am happy to have a relatively drama-free year.
I see some big gaps in this list, at least in terms of Things that Kept Me Occupied. There were some really good vacations with Rod’s parents in the 90’s, and I can’t remember when exactly they were. And how to list all the volunteer work, the LASIK, the garage sales, the book groups, the TMJ saga, the parties hosted and attended, the hikes, the books read, the eight times I joined Weight Watchers and all the other diets, the shopping, the date nights, the viruses, the neighborhood playgroup/online community I helped build? I know, dull. And yet it was interesting when it happened.
On to the present day!
2009: Hey, look, I’m turning 40! Life isn’t what my twenty year old self envisioned it would be like at forty, but most of the time, I don’t see how I could get much happier. My dreams are different than when I was 20, but now a lot more of them are feasible.
I’d still rather be perpetually 26 or 32, and gee whiz, the time sure did go fast. I admit I dislike the whole aging process. Reading glasses and hearing aid, here I come (eventually)! Probably not coincidentally I’ve recently had my first go at wrinkle fillers and bought some new makeup, I’m trying some new workouts, and I’m seriously looking into weight loss surgery. 40: Where Vanity Teams Up With the Desire to Avoid Dying Early.
Finally, let me say that I am very sorry that I made so many “old” jokes when my mom turned 40. Regrets, I’ve had a few of those, too.
