Be Real Magazine

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In Issue 13:
Scintillations
Eight Legged Freaks
Cliff Jumping To Freedom
Princess of Crooked Lake
Easy Delivery
Transiting Venus
Different Things
Gateway To Middle Age
Letters to
My Younger Self

Featured Artist:
Andrea Scher
Superhero Guide
to Designing a
Creative Business
Photography
Belly
Funny
Grasses
Liam
Origami
Red Flower
Distance

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Previous Issues

Gateway to Middle Age
Sina Evans

The ubiquitous “they” say that marijuana is the gateway drug, a fluffy but seductive introduction to the world of track marks and white lines. I’m ashamed to say I’ve found my own gateway to another certain rite of passage—middle age. My drug of choice, apparently, is none other than the flowered shirt. I’m sure it’s the first step in a long, trudging march between cute, sassy and bootylicious to puffy, wrinkled and frumpilicious.

This realization began to dawn last week when at work we played a dangerous game called “what was your favorite age?” Let me offer this advice in case you, too, want to play: don’t play with children, and by children I mean anyone under 30. Yes, I know I haven’t cleared 30 by much myself, but the children with whom I work think I might as well be 60.

The game works like this—someone asks “what was your favorite age?” And you might say, if you were me, “27, hands down, 27 was great.” At which point the child next to me, while twirling her hair around her finger, said, “I can’t even imagine BEING 27!” She gasped at the end of this exclamation, as if her girlish intonation didn’t show enough alarm.

“I can’t even imagine BEING 27!” Gasp!

In her defense, she’s 19. She talks about high school as if it was yesterday. She hasn’t yet realized high school was awful. I wanted to tell her that at 27, I finally felt like an adult. I made enough money to pay my bills on time, and I even had enough left over for a beer or two on the weekend. I was in the best shape of my life. I dated a lot, although some of my friends thought I, perhaps, went on too many dates with too many different people. Tuh-may-toe, tuh-mah-toe, I was happy.

Sometime after “what was your favorite age,” I suggested to my team we should have a potluck during our next work-a-thon. Later that day, another coworker thanked me by calling me the “team mom.”   I should have seen it coming. Besides, it was my own fault—potlucks are the middle age equivalent marking the successful navigation through the marijuana gateway and onto the hunt for something a little more, well, intoxicating. I asked if I could instead be the wacky aunt, someone everyone loved to see but nobody ever counted on. She said no.

I told her she was grounded.

A few months ago an acquaintance asked if I had any kids. No, no kids for me at the moment. She told me I better hurry up because she could hear my biological clock ticking.

Of course as I push further into middle age-hood, the power of my frumpiliciousness merges with this societal pressure to couple and spawn. I can sympathize with Jude’s lyrical genius, often wishing that I was stuck with someone, wishing that I was a half of a two. Meanwhile back in reality, I recently watched Mona Lisa Smile and nervously laughed through the scene where the 30 year-old, unmarried art teacher (played by Julia Roberts, herself twice-married in real life) fields such unassuming questions from her students as “why aren’t you married?!” I guess it’s a good thing I’m not living at Wellesley in the 1950’s.

The lovable cast at Saturday Night Live has been mock-advertising “Mom Pants” this season. They come all the way up to the armpits, with pockets big enough for tissues and quarters and keys and snacks and a cell phone. They come in khaki green, khaki beige and denim. They camouflage a frumpy ass. They wash-n-go. They are, at this very moment, lying in a crumpled pile in my bedroom. And wouldn’t you know it?   They’re actually pretty comfortable.

There are just some things you have to accept. Middle age is one of those things. I know most American males make a good show of how well they’re coping at middle age-hood with their Porsches and crushes on teenagers and drastic changes and new-found precision with regard to their facial hair. I found myself in a similar situation just three weeks ago. No, not with regard to my facial hair, but to the hair on my head. I cut it off, or rather had it cut off. With each snip, my hair sprang into youthful curls, bouncing easily and framing my puffy, wrinkly face. I can tuck it behind my ears or I can throw it into a stylish little ponytail or I can scrunch and go. There is virtually no styling needed and I must admit it looks perky. Cute. Even sassy, some would say. And then it hit me—I have a soccer-mom haircut.

My dreams have been interesting lately. I find myself dream-jogging, a lithe 27 year old with rebellious, long, goth-chick-red hair. I smile a lot in my dreams, I love being 27 again. Sometimes in the half-awake state the next morning, as I slather myself with sunscreen and moisturizer to protect myself from that evil sun, I toy with the idea of going for a run. Just like the old days. A couple miles, no worries. But let’s face it, who am I kidding?   You know it’s going to be a power-walk in my mom pants, accompanied by my dog, my biological clock setting the pace, an audible metronome kept company by the swing, swish, swing of my cute soccer-mom curls tucked behind my ears.