The Secret to Un-Olding Yourself
You can't buy this shit at Sephora
My son was seven when he realized I was old.
“MOM!” he shouted when I picked him up from school. “Luca’s mom is having a 40th birthday party!”
“Cool, kid. But I don’t think that’s going to be as fun as you think. She’s probably not spending two months of mortgage payments to rent out an arcade so each guest can go home with a squishy banana key chain from a claw machine.”
“NO MOM! I don’t want to go to her party! I want to know why she’s only 40 and YOU ARE SO MUCH OLDER!”
Well. The jig is up.
Can’t say public schools aren’t doing their job. 40-something is definitely older than 40. What’s he going to do when he finds my driver’s license and realizes I haven’t weighed 125 pounds since 6th grade?
“Are you older than Adler’s mom?” he asked.
“Yes, I think I’ve got some years on her,” I answered.
“But she has white hair!” he said.
I was grateful my son wasn’t tall enough to see what was happening on the top of my head.
“White hair doesn’t mean someone is old. I knew a girl who went gray in her 20’s.”
“Are you older than Cameron’s mom?”
“Probably.”
“She looks like a grandma!”
“She might be!”
“Well you can’t be older than Syd’s mom! Everyone knows she’s like sixty!”
I knew Syd’s mom and she was nowhere near sixty, but this was Syd’s mom’s battle to fight.
“Yah, she’s way older than me.”
Advanced Advanced Maternal Age
Truth was, out of all the kids my son’s age, there was maybe one mom who was older than me and we’re talking by hours—minutes maybe. There’s a few who are hot on my heels, but most were anywhere between seven and ten years my junior.
The medical term for being an old mother is, "Advanced Maternal Age” or better yet and more simply put— geriatric. If I had a dollar for every time that word showed up on my medical chart I’d put it all towards keeping these gray roots at bay. And a really nice eye cream. Anyone over 35 gets the Advanced Maternal Age/Geriatric moniker and we all know 35 is hardly old. But the female reproductive system is the Electrolux appliance of body parts. It can do all sorts of cool things, but doesn’t last as long as other parts and is really complicated and expensive to fix.
Between us, I was much older than 35 when I became a mom. Let’s just say I was an honor student getting AP credit in Maternity 101. What can I say? I’m a late bloomer. I didn’t even think I wanted kids until Bart and I were almost engaged and these mysterious, prophesized children that would one day be waking us up at 4:00AM and spending our discretionary money on things like blind bags filled with plastic junk food replicas and tickets to see Thomas the Train live started materializing in our conversations.
BART: I’m buying these vintage G.I. Joe action figures for our son.
ME: I’m redecorating the living room for our daughter.
One day, a childless Bart and I were at Crate & Barrel shopping for a coffee table (for our daughter) with all the other child-free people who bought expensive furniture with sharp corners and delicate surfaces, when he saw this metal wall tea light candle holder and said, “Wow— that would make such a cool nightlight for a kid.”
It was right there in that fake living room, I thought, Yes, I would like to procreate with a man who thinks laying our babies down to sleep beneath a wall of fire is ‘cool.’ We were married a year later and almost a year after that, I was pregnant with our one and only child, and I was geriatric for both occasions.
What was I doing while all my friends were getting knocked up? I don’t know. Buying their kids faux fur coats and socks that looked like stilettos from Marshall’s. Watching a lot of HGTV. I went to Australia once. That was cool. Otherwise? I guess waiting for a man with a nonchalance toward flammability to sweep me off my feet?
Surprising Benefits to Having an Old-Ass Mom
So, yeah, sorry, kid. Your mom is old. But I like to think he got exactly the mom he was meant to have. A younger mom would probably have the energy to DO THINGS with him which would impede on his video gaming time. She’d probably MAKE HIM HEALTHY dinners instead of letting him sup on frozen waffles and Cocoa Chimps cereal. She’d probably have time to READ and therefore would take advice from EXPERTS who would say laughing when your kid says fuck and letting them watch Deadpool is BAD. Man, he would hate having a younger mom! What a buzzkill!
There’s lots of hidden benefits to waiting until your pregnancy is considered high-risk to have a baby. Older parents are supposedly more financially stable (hmm), happier and less stressed (oh?), and more emotionally stable and patient (one might say, checked out.) Plus years later, the menopause you and that adolescent child will get to bond over your changing bodies together:
Hair in weird places
Strange pungent smells emanating from your bodies
Surprising and ferocious mood swings
Lack of control over the shape of your physical body
ZITS
My mom used to say age is just a number. Really, a state of mind. I think it’s more of an “essence.” I worked with a woman fifteen years younger who exuded middle-age. She couldn’t wait to get there. Like a young millennial playing dress up in Chico’s clothing. It’s all in how you present and I don’t think I present old. At least it looks like genuine surprise when I confess to someone how old I am. I’d like to say it’s because of my youthful complexion or high energy level, but it’s probably because they can’t figure out how this mummy could be a mommy.
My Secret Weapon!
You can use all the rejuvenation and lifting and brighting creams, and do Pilates four days a week and have a “botox person” and take down a nine-year-old girl battling for the last bottle of Drunk Elephant at Sephora, but my young child is also my secret weapon. One time a co-worker referred to him as a teenager. I VERY QUICKLY corrected her, making sure the whole room knew my son was barely double digits. Aging him, ages me and this is a very tenuous front I’m cultivating here.
To an outsider, the math doesn’t math and even though the math shouldn’t math it did math and the formula is throwing them all off. I’m totally drinking my own Kool-Aid too. I’ve never felt younger because I have no choice. This kid is way too immature to take care of me. He can’t even make his own ramen! If I were this age and was an empty-nester like my friends are becoming, would I still be working out, trying to eat healthy, and kicking ass on the basketball court? Or would I be sustaining this old fossil on Costco churros and frozen single-serve dinners? I mean, I fully plan on doing both of those things when I am an empty-nester. I’m just delaying my inevitable downfall.
Geriatric motherhood might not be for everyone, but old or not, my son got me at peak mom time. Right now, I’ve never felt closer to him and maybe that’s because middle-age begets a certain assuredness which begets a know-it-all-ness which begets a very chill, laidback (lazy?) approach to parenting.
Or maybe it’s because with our newly sprouted mustaches, my son finally looks like me.
XO,
Shelly
CNN, Bitches!
Amazing human, author, dad, and fellow D&D aficionado, Shannon Carpenter interviewed me for a CNN article about what parents can learn from Dungeons & Dragons. CNN. No bigs. Talking about my book. Whatevs.
A Book? What Book?
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“CNN bitches!”
I love that you will be going thru menopause at the same time your son’s voice will be cracking.
FYI empty nester moms are still moms. 😉