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I am so middle-aged.
Some might argue that, at 51, I’ve been middle-aged for awhile. But I feel as if I’ve just arrived. Here’s how I know: About a month ago I went to the store and became engrossed with a beautiful baby. I watched as he interacted with his clearly pregnant mom. I figured her to be about 4 or 5 months along and I felt sympathetic—Wally and the Snapper are 19 months apart. When I bumped into the mom again in another aisle I asked her how old the baby was. He was 9 months. I nodded knowingly and asked when she was due. She wasn’t pregnant.
I was mortified. I fled.
I never would have asked that question when I was in my 30’s. I would have considered it an infringement of that woman’s privacy. Now here I was, a biddy nosing about her business in a store—and a craft store to boot! How much more middle-aged can you get??
Here’s how I also know I’m middle-aged: Wally and the Snapper’s dad is old enough to take Viagra. Now I’m sure you want to know how I would know such a thing about a man to whom I have not been not married for 16 years. Well, one night a week or so ago we were having dinner and the Snapper, out of the blue, started telling George and I how he’d gone looking for something in his dad’s refrigerator and had come across what he thought were vitamins but when he read the label he saw they were pills for erectile dysfunction. I started to laugh so hard I had to leave the table. He could have used those pills 25 years ago! Still, he is now old enough to really need them, which made me feel—well, not as old as him.
But here’s how I really know I’m middle-aged: Wally brought his college girlfriend home to meet the family this weekend. He and the Snapper arranged to double date with their girlfriends—and then decided to ask George and I to “triple date” with them. They drove separately from us and when George and I got into our car and he asked jokingly, “where to?” I said, “straight ahead into our future” because I know this is the shape of things to come. I looked around that restaurant table on Saturday night and thought that some time in the really-not-that-distant future, our family will include two more people, two young women like the ones seated next to my sons. Two women I don’t even know yet who will eventually know more about my sons than I do. It will no longer be just the four of us at the table, it will be the six of us. That’s an automatic 18% gratuity on the tip!
The upside is I’ll have someone to go with me to the lady’s room.
The next afternoon we had a lovely Sunday afternoon lunch in the garden with my parents and the boys and the college girlfriend. The Snapper left to drive my parents home. I packed up some leftovers for Wally, hugged him good-bye, then he got in her car and they drove off together at 3:00.
