I turn forty this week, which also happens to be the same age Lucille Ball gave birth for the first time. What a sharp contrast, right? When I heard Lucy turned forty the same year she became a mom and her career hit the stratosphere, I put both hands on the steering wheel to steady myself.
I don’t know what age I’ve spent my entire life up until this point thinking Lucille Ball was during the taping of I Love Lucy, but it certainly wasn’t middle age. As a child, people over twenty seemed ancient. Now, I look at, say, Tina Turner at forty-five singing “What’s Love Got To Do With It” and she looks like an adult woman superstar. Not the Crypt Keeper. Definitely not Mother Angelica.
I love older women. This is well established. I love them for so many reasons — for surviving, for not giving a fuck, because I have a massive void broadly labeled “mommy issues” over my heart container. And now I can add, in the eyes of the youngs at least, I am an old woman. Which is just great! (That is not sarcasm.)
I’ve spent my entire life feeling middle aged. I can’t look back at any decade and think I had a real handle on youth culture. As a tween I wanted to be Gen X. As a twenty-something mom, I’d browse the Lands End catalog with SpongeBob sparkle eyes over the happy white people in sensible cardigans and khaki capris — they were so outrageously coordinated and I was the messiest.
Look, Rosie O’Donnell was the only other person I “knew” who wore Crocs during the mid aughts. And not ironically wear them, I mean think they were comfortable and sensible foot vehicles in a variety of rainbow hues, wear them.
As a young child, my grandmother gave so little mind to rules she would smoke in bathrooms at non-smoking restaurants and steal silver cutlery from the table. After spending forty-ish years working as a waitress, I think she earned those puffs. (The silverware hiding out in her beige “pocketbook?” I don’t know, maybe she was a klepto.) But older women, to me, have always meant a kind of freedom I longed for, looked forward to, couldn’t wait to unlock. This is weird, though, to finally be here at the middle age doorstep with all my baggage ringing the doorbell like, Hey, girl, HAY!
My thirties have always felt like an extended season of my twenties. It was a decade where I straddled homelessness then bought a home, had a car repossessed then paid one off, ate my way through my feelings and then kept eating; got a career and realized I’d like a job instead. It’s when, after fifteen years together, I got married at a movie theater looking like a plus-size Morticia.
It’s when I finally got health insurance that costs way too much, decided animal prints are a neutral, and Facebook can go pound sand — contact me another way.
Britney Spears was my Spotify artist of the decade, heels became broadly speaking, good for you, no longer for me, and I guess I’m a “Disney adult” now — which is personally terrifying and yet fulfilling all at the same time. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that holding two opposing ideas at the same time and still being able to function makes a person intelligent. It is undetermined if I am currently functional, but good to know Fitz.
Earlier in the decade my writing was published in an anthology and a writer who meant the world to me as a young mother opened her book with something I’d written. Mega bestselling author Jennifer Weiner told me she loved my stories and then my words won some writing conference awards. Then, nothing…
Okay, not nothing. I worked a lot. Like all of the time, I have many cool things to show for it like my teeny house that feels big and bold and like the best award, but doesn’t fill my cup. I wanted to be done writing a book by the time I turned 40. Last week I realized, if I am lucky, I get to be 40 for a whole year.
I can do this. I will write a book this year. It is going to suck and I will complain about it because complaining is my favorite, but this is the year. This is the decade I’ve been waiting for — I am the me I’ve been waiting for.
Hold me accountable will you?
CURRENTLY
Reading: Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come
Liking: This Twitter thread that is a full full journey for adult women (thanks, James McAvoy)
Watching: What Happened, Brittany Murphy?
Listening: Make The Road By Walking // Menahan Street Band
Subscribing: Homeculture by Meg Conley
Coveting: This gray floral skull onesie is for all seasons
SHARE FLOP ERA with the kind of person who is winging middle age just like the rest of us.