Midsummer

It’s my “birthday week”, but I’m ambivalent about it. I’m looking forward to celebrating on Friday (like last year, dinner at El Coyote followed by cake at home), but otherwise, I don’t feel the need to make a big deal about it. I guess these mid-life birthdays just sort of lose their magic. Honestly if the day went by with no acknowledgement - and that was normal somehow and not something I should take personally - I really wouldn’t care. 

So, at (almost) 54, here are the stats:

Still bleeding regularly. WHY.

The heaviest I’ve ever been, outside of pregnancy 

Other than my sometimes debilitating arthritic toe pain on my left foot, still able to do anything physically - lift weights, long hikes, etc. 

Not on any medications 

No real menopause stuff other than bad sleep and brittle nails (slightly)

I’m the mother of a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. I remember years ago doing the math and wondering what it would be like to be going through menopause with two boys going through puberty…but a) I’m not in menopause, and b) Theo is not going though puberty, yet. Honestly, it’s been fine. I often wonder if my life with girls would be different; you hear so much about the drama of girls at these ages. I suppose there were some ugly moments when I was at that age, but, of course, all of that was cut short when I moved in with my sister at fourteen. So I don’t really have a road map for life in an intact family as a teenager.

We had an idyllic family day yesterday, the type that I used to dream about but only got to have during the pandemic because of the H’s (until now) 24/7 work schedule. We all had a free day so I posited that we make a pool day of it, and I got out all the cushions and scrubbed the bird poop off the table and chairs while the H scrubbed the rat pee and poop off of the grill and burnt it off, as well, before cooking anything. We splashed around and hung out in the hot tub and watched the World Cup on a phone, while making steaks (for them), cherry tomato/basil/mozzarella bites, grilled corn, chips and dip and watermelon. It was such a nice time that I’m encouraged to try to do this every free Saturday - and there are a few - until summer is done. 

As Bobby’s about to start high school, college is being pushed to the forefront of my mind. There’s a lot I still have to investigate and learn about, of course, but I feel like we’re in a decent position - I’m able to save about $10,000 a year for him (I currently have $25,000 saved, and we have four, technically eight, years of savings to go); and so far he’s been a straight A student. We’re not going to be able to afford some fancy private school with room and board of course, but surely we can come up with something suitable in California’s system, even if it’s two years of cheap community college and then transfer out somewhere impressive, and living at home. I also have the fantasy of him going to a Santa Barbara-area school and living in one of the spare apartments belonging to a dance friend of mine for cheap. So many possibilities, it’s exciting. I love to think about how (hopefully) much easier these kids’ young adult lives will be than mine - working a minimum wage job and living in slums and just trying to stay afloat, wanting a future but not having the slightest idea how to get there, all my friends off at college leaving me completely isolated. You know what happens when you’re a young girl looking for guidance and comfort at that age, lost and struggling and with no support? Some predatory man steps in and takes over, which is exactly what happened to me in the form of my New School film teacher, eleven years older and incredibly toxic and controlling. 

This is the thing I couldn’t see when I was a young adult but I see now, which is that young people still need a ton of support and guidance; I think us Gen Xers were sold the line that the minute you turn eighteen you’re automatically autonomous, whereas we now know this is far from the truth. So it’s easy for us to harrumph about kids today still living at home in their twenties and not living an independent adult life while we had to suffer and struggle…but I don’t want my kids to struggle, not unnecessarily anyway. And I’m pretty sure if I’d gone to college and had friends and was studying something I was passionate about, my life would have been dramatically better. Those post-high school years were some of the worst of my life. I don’t want that for them. 

Thankfully, these kids have loving and engaged parents, and although I’m struggling financially at the moment, it’s not so bad that I can’t put money away for them. Their lives are going to be very different. And just imagine what the world could be like by 2030 - our Trump nightmare over, things looking up…? Maybe? Lindsey Graham died suddenly last night, so anything is possible.