Yes, I’m another mom who is officially reaching middle-age and the BIG 4-0 looms at me on August first, as highly-anticipated as an annual mammogram and visit to the ob-gyn.
I’ve read fellow-writer friends express their feelings on turning forty here on the blog and over wine on coveted girls’ nights out. And, sure as crows feet are etching their way across my eyes and AARP bumps my mailing address up in their pending queue, my time has come.
Part of me is in denial as I’m surely still twenty-one, working thirty hours a week, going to college full-time, juggling a busy social schedule and somehow managing to still catch a nap before heading out to bars at eleven p.m.
Other days I’m the twenty-five year old who flew around the country non-stop recruiting on college campuses, trying to relive the dream and figure out the corporate thing before settling down a bit to have my kids.
Then I’m twenty-eight, the thrill of holding our newborn son placing a perma-smile on my face and confirming that yes, being a mother was the coolest and toughest role I would ever play.
Three years later, my second son came on the scene and I gotta be honest, between his birth and my daughter’s just under two years later I lost a few months in there so it’s all a little hazy. I had started a new position and was traveling and trying to hold it all together while working a reduced work
schedule.
When I’m feeling like my thirty-five year old self I’m struggling with figuring out who I’m supposed to be–losing my job when my company went bankrupt, plunking away on this little blog no one had ever heard of while all of my friends and family watched me muddle through in conjoined surprise and concern.
Most days, though, I feel like someone who feels pretty damn comfortable in her skin after all of these years, even though I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up (today’s front-runners: college professor/trophy wife/Oprah’s personal assistant) and who can’t seem to learn enough about everything.
All the Kates of my past are here in this slightly more-wrinkled package who is often called “Mrs. Hall” (I still look over my shoulder for my mother-in-law) and have given me the gift of challenges, experiences, and triumphs.
The bonus is that now I’ll be able to watch my sons and daughter (pictured left with my mom and a childhood photo of me) in each of their life stages, hopefully making a few less mistakes than I have and with much less fear than I’ve harbored.
These first forty years have given me so much more than I’ve deserved that I can’t wait to see what the next forty hold.
