I am slowly, yet most assuredly approaching my decade. This one happens to be forty. I know what they are saying...."forty is the new [insert whatever not so old sounding thing here]." Whatever. I don't generally have an issue with age. Aside from being self-supporting since my very punctual college graduation a bazillion years ago, I have been largely unable to grow up anyways. As my husband said, "baby, everyone got on the bus but us."
The question remains. What bus will we be catching? Maybe it will be the same bus as all those late pro-creating celebrities. The ones who most famously had crap-tons of fun through their 20's and 30's, and then miraculously produce angelic twins on their 41st birthday. If I make it on that bus, will they dispense valuable advice on getting rid of the baby weight even before your episiotomy stitches are out? Then again maybe that bus will just make me feel out of place in my Target jeans and Danskos....while my miracle baby gets a complex about his or her Costco deal baby carrier. No doubt, the celeb miracle baby bus will be a character building experience for us all.
I'm not even sure what the other buses have to offer. The "high powered career couple" bus? We wouldn't make it up the front steps. More appealing is the "artsy globetrotting freewheeling couple with fabulously creative ways to make gads of money" bus. That bus, however, is like the dodo bird.
So my decade approaches and I wonder what the second half will bring. And I navigate the balance of letting go of what I cannot control, and enjoying to the fullest what I can.
I probably sound naive saying this, but I feel like I'm waiting for a bus too. I'm just at a different stop than you. My question is not which bus, but why board at all?
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to the decisions I made in my late teens and early twenties, decisions today seem like they might dictate the rest of my life. Leaving my hometown, getting an undergrad degree, making an independent living -- all no-brainers for the foundations of a normal, flexible lifestyle. As I approach 30, however, things get complicated. Do I adopt a "career"? If so, will it just be a cover-up until it's "time" to make babies? If I pick the career I truely want, to be a dancer, making babies will surely be postponed. Then it will be up to chance to decide if babies are even in the picture for me at all.
Basically, whether we're approaching 30, 40, or even 50, all us women are waiting for the same bus, the baby bus... and I feel like I don't want to have to decide between getting on it or not, I just want it to keep making trips around the block until I'm ready, or not... This is of course my imagination, not an answer to the conundrum.