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When I was a youngin’ (18), I thought I would be married by 26 & done with school.
In reality, post UCLA I re-institutionalized myself in school at 22 and did not emerge from that dark hole for 5 years. Not counting the obligatory post-doc and exams to boot.
I wed at 29 to a rare creature, a species utterly alien to myself: an engineer. And as oft said, a mystical "good man"- so much like finding a unicorn…but there are sometimes I wish we had waited; waited ’til I got to visit another 20 countries, and aquired the desire/talent to keep house. (Top 20 on my list not yet visited: Peru, Bhutan, Mongolia, Cuba, Espana, Tibet, Turkey,Greece, Siberia, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Panama, Brazil, Italy,Ghana, South Africa, Cambodia, Singapore, Phillipines.)
At 21 I never would have imagined all this.
Wouldn’t have believed that at 33 I’m physically healthier than at any time since, oh, I was a 9 year old tomboy climbing on the roof; and physically stronger than ever, ever. That my beloved friends are now parental units, that my favorite drink is green tea, not JD/wine/Kahlua/Asahi/Peet’s nor Coffee Society Blend.
I had hoped that by this age maniacal procrastination, mortifying discalculia, feline mood swings, the urges to eat cheesecake for breakfast would be things outgrown.
Alas, I regret to inform you that this is not to be.
Apparently car and floor washing compulsions, and bonding with TV do not naturally evolve with age either.
If you had asked me in 6th grade if I would have the same friends 20 years later, I would have said: "of course."
And would have been correct. My Thomas Edison Elementary school buddies, how I love thee, and how we stayed close through all those years in the quaintest of all fashions: postal service. Imagine, we were the last generation of American children to grow up without the internet! What a precious thing it is to remember your hair, your rollerskates,how you looked in 1st grade as we sat around the carpet for storytime. Or how the boy across the street whom I adored & made me my first mixtape, became the man living large in NYC, and now married with canine companion.
Monday I was grumbling to myself in the normal Scroogey way, about being a stupid workaholic-why am I going to the office on my birthday in the freakin’ rain for these ungrateful louts anyways…but I got a ton done, most of the day spent supervising my brilliant students & then my colleagues crashed a meeting I was holding & ambushed me with a Whole Food chocolate decadence cake. (!!!!!!!!)
Awwww…. I was speechless. Touched,of course. And just amazed that they managed to surprise me, and had made the effort to import a non-Chinatown cake to appease the foodie. The answer to why all of us work at ACMHS: the people. The clients and students we believe in, and the astonishing kindheartedness of the colleagues. And lucky me, I get to keep celebrating, with a lunch at Phnomh Phenh tomorrow.
In the Bohjalian book:
"In college, " Spencer was saying, "I never thought I would be a bald, angry man when I hit middle age."
"No one does," John answered, and he guessed it was the truth. Certainly he’d never presumed that he would hit forty with a receding hairline and eyeglasses.
That section of dialogue has circled in my head for weeks.
It seemed so true and sad, yet funny and intimate. What’s odd is that I actually did imagine I would be an angry, older dude. Yes, I said dude, I always felt so much more like a stereotypical weenie man than a sugar and spice girl back then. OK, I don’t anticipate going bald since I have hair density like a river beaver, but I am in eyeglasses and seriously pondering Lasik…
People keep "helpfully" reminding me that I am nearing the end of my natural reproductive years. I can’t decide if it’s amusing or insulting that my personal bits & organs are considered a matter for unsolicited commentary in the first place.
I wrote my dissertation about women in menopause. I read MORE magazine. I ALREADY have random hot flashes. Going gray does not concern me. My frownie lines, all right that’s an issue-perhaps we all find other people’s character lines more charming than our own! Crinkles on others, really cute. On myself-horrors! How to refrain from selling my soul to vanity for some Botox botulism?!
Things have rarely come out as I planned, and that control freak upstairs is slowly learning to live with the laws of unintended consequences.
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