Forty-Five

Next month, I turn forty-five and it scares the crap out of me.  Why does an age that ends in five cause me such angst?  Thirty was good, and forty was fine.  I didn't have a big party for either, which was cool with me.  Eighteen was big because I was going off to college within months.  Twenty-one was fun, too.  The actual birthday part was not.  I spent the evening working on MMSS (Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences) homework with my good friend H.  A few days later, we went to the Green Mill, a famous jazz bar where Al Capone used to hang out, to celebrate with a few other friends.  That was fun.  I should have spent more of my twenties in music clubs, especially since I lived in Chicago where jazz and blues bars were everywhere.  I digress.  I am avoiding the topic and googling places I should have gone before I had kids.

Jack turned 45 last month, and I already feel like I am forty-five, rounding myself up to his age.  Forty-five seems like the summer solstice of life.  After the solstice, the days get shorter, letting us know winter is on the way. We never know when we are going to die, but according to life expectancy charts, forty-five is past the standard midpoint.

I have two good friends who are coming up on fifty next year.  I think of them as being "my age."  I can't get my head around that I have friends who are so close to that milestone, even though I have friends at all kinds of ages, including one who is 92.  A few years ago, I was making the rounds on the 40th Birthday Party Circuit.  Fifty?  Oh dear.    

Maybe part of this angst is seeing my parents retired.  I have twenty more years to work.  I can't retire if I am not working.  I have been out of the paid workforce for fourteen years, and I really do not want to start looking for a job when I am fifty.  By then I will have been out of the paid workforce for nineteen years.  I'll be a fossil.

Some of my angst about my age has to do with working, some of it doesn't.  I am trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up, except I have been grown up for more than half of my life already.  I listen to my daughter talk about what she wants to be, and it changes every day.  This morning at breakfast, she wanted to be a lawyer who sues people.  Perhaps I should say "sues companies."  She thought it would be really cool to be on the Apple legal team that sued Samsung for copying the iPhone.  (Where did I go wrong? I am glad she is ambitious, but suing people?  Really?)  She has the luxury of changing her mind before lunch, which sometimes happens.

The Boy, on the other hand, worries that at the age of ten he isn't "doing" anything, as if he should have a slate of patents, cured cancer or being running his own company by now.   Or maybe his ambitions aren't so lofty.  Perhaps he just wants to accomplish something, even if it's small.  Maybe he wants to build something cool that someone could use, like a chair or tree house, or paint the walls of his bedroom.

I am going through the same thing they are, except to the power of forty-five.  I was drilling through LinkedIn the other day, tracking old bosses I used to work for.  I am sure they are happy, but they are doing the same thing they were 15 to 20 years ago when I worked for them, and they had been in the field for at least a decade when I knew them.  I admire their tenacity and stick-to-itiveness, but in my nine years of paid employment, I had three to four different jobs.  Granted, they all required the same clothes (suits with pantyhose and pumps), and the changes weren't hugely significant.  It is not like I went from ballet dance to teacher to surgeon.  My changes were small, but changes nonetheless.  I've been equally busy in my volunteer and mothering life, too.

It's not that I am looking back with regret.  I liked working and I am happy I stayed home with my kids.  But fourteen years is a long time.  The Boy starts middle school next year, my daughter high school.  Is it time for me to change, too?