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I've been really smarting over turning 42 this week. I've been fretting about maybe, just maybe, not being who I wanted to be at this stage of the game. I'm not a runner anymore; I'm not the cool kind of mommy who lets the kids fingerpaint on the walls; I'm not nearly as patient and longsuffering with my kids as I should be (I'm downright cranky 90% of the time); I'm a horrible failure as a housekeeper, and I'm a really lousy friend to my friends. Someone is always doing something wonderful and thoughtful for me, while I just don't seem to ever be able to return the favor. Tonight, my family went out for dinner at P.F. Chang's for a belated birthday celebration and the King sent our children home with Grandma and Grandpa afterward. We had enjoyed our time in Market Square while celebrating our anniversary, so he thought to repeat the occasion since tonight was Sundown in the City. Neither of us anticipated the number of other people who'd had the same idea. We could barely elbow our way through the crowd to even get to a spot to stand, much less sit, so we opted to just keep elbowing and to run into Oodles, hoping for a quiet, smoke-free spot to sit. We found the spot, but not the quiet! The place, just like the Square outside, was packed with college-aged kids and twenty-somethings in varying stages of inebriation, general over-excitement, and anti-social behavior. What struck me as I looked around the room was the sense that everyone was really just "trying too hard." There were a number of young ladies in casual clothing such as capri pants, khaki hiking shorts, etc., wearing enormously out-of-place stilettos! And let's just say that noone's cleavage was where it is required to be by the BHEA dress code. Décolletage was de rigueur. [Just couldn't resist the chance to use the only two French words I know in one sentence.] And noone looked truly happy. They sort of looked like they were going to maybe have a headache later, truth be told. They really looked like they were anxious and that they were really trying very hard to impress one another, but that they weren't quite sure they were succeeding. Laughing too loudly and looking posed. It popped into my head that I wouldn't be twenty again for all the tea in China (or in Petrolia Mercantile and Tea for that matter). Which instantly made me feel better about being 42, somehow. When I think of how inconsiderate I was at 20; at all the things in the world that I didn't understand yet, and the ridiculous things that I thought were important that were really ephemeral -- my face fairly burns with embarrassment for the younger me. And then I wondered to myself: what things will I look back on when I'm 62 and blush with embarrassment about how silly I was in my early forties? |
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