This midlife crisis brought to you by your friends at the AARP

Getting older sucks donkey dicks.  Sorry, but there really is no better way to put it.  It especially sucks donkey dicks when your midlife crisis smacks you upside the head, courtesy of the American Association of Retired Persons

I got this letter in the mail. Around my 40th birthday. I threw away the letter, but it was something along the lines of

"Dear Mrs. Zookeeper,

Our records indicate that you are about to celebrate your 46th birthday. Don't you think it's time to join?

Sincerely,

AARP"

Oh wait, hold up. I know that I'm getting old, but did I enter some sort of time warp here? An alternate dimension where I'm not about to celebrate the 5th anniversary of my 35th birthday (Yes, dammit, I figured out that 35 was ok, 35 was chill, and if I tried really hard and the lighting was poor and the hair color to cover the grays was good, I could pass for a while...until it started getting absurd. Me: "This year is the 8th anniversary of my 35th birthday." Though, it's fun to know that in three more years some people might have to take their shoes off to do the math.)

Now, let me just tell you that I never expected to actually see 40. 40 is old. When my mom turned 40, I got cute and wrapped her present in paper that had red "4's" all over it, only I used a red Sharpie to make "0's" after every single "4" on that paper. My grandparents became grandparents in their 40's. And, my grandparents were old when I was little, and then they died. So 40? Um, not feeling it so much. Remember this scene from When Harry Met Sally? The key part for today's purposes? Happens at about 2:01 in.

40 is when life is supposed to settle down. When the grown ups have it going on, know what comes next, and actually behave like grown ups.  40 is time for Geritol, and saving for college...for your children. 40 is saggy boobs and Oil of Olay and granny underpants.40 is coloring your hair not for kicks but to cover the grays. 40 is half of 80, and the average life expectancy for an American woman is just slightly over 80 years.  So if 40 isn’t midlife, what is?

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When I was really little, I wanted to be a gymnast, because I watched the Olympics and thought that looked really, seriously cool. Figure skating was high on the list too, but I lived in South Carolina, where the ponds didn't even freeze so I couldn't figure out how I was gonna learn to ice skate, let alone be a world class champion figure skater.  So it was gymnastics. And since I could already hyper-extend my elbows in ways that freaked out the other kids I knew I was a cinch. Except that I couldn't talk my parents into lessons. Partly, I'm sure, because we moved around so much, but mostly (I know now) because they really couldn't afford it. Still it would have been awesome to have my picture on the box of Wheaties, even if I hated to eat Wheaties and the only reason we had them was because my brother's hero at the time was Bruce Jenner and he was on the Wheaties box, and yeah, eating the box itself probably would have tasted better.

Then for a while I wanted to be either one of Charlie's Angels, or a witch. Charlie's Angels were badass, and beautiful, and they could really mess you up, and what little girl who moved around a lot wouldn't want to be able to do that, instead of having to try to figure out people and how to make new friends every six months? That's where being a witch would have helped. I could make a spell and have everyone like me and know everything and get everything I wanted. And if I could be the only Charlie's Angel that was a witch too? Oh, hell yeah! I wouldn't even be a bad witch, but a good one, who only made spells against the bad guys (including my third 4th grade teacher, who had absolutely no sense of humor and loved having parent/teacher conferences and sending kids to counseling and who I really wished off the face of the earth...)

Of course, if you ask a few people who know me, I got the witch part right.  At least the driving a broom kind of witch part.

Later, I fell in love with books and reading, and decided that when I grew up I was going to be a writer.  I'd write these really popular books and make millions and do book signings and go on tours. I mean, I'd already been making these stories up in my head my whole life, with details and everything, so how hard could it be to just write what was in my head down on paper? That one stuck with me for a while, but pretty soon I realized that most authors didn't just set out to be authors. They had regular jobs at first, and worked hard to get published and still had to support themselves and stuff.  So I kept doing really well in school and tried to figure out what my day job was going to be until I wrote the Great American Novel and could retire in style with fan mail. Well hmm, what job would be good? Let’s see, I'm really great at arguing the hell out of just about anything, and winning, so maybe a lawyer? Or, an English teacher? That goes with writing, and I loved diagramming sentences and shit, Shakespeare was the bomb, so I could possibly teach High School English? Then I fell in love with drama and acting, so I was ready to give up my writing career to be a Broadway actress. That lasted about until I told my grandparents that I was looking at colleges for acting and they laughed and told me I should learn something useful. Like what? Psychology, because after all I had been doing it my whole life and got great grades in it? Except that I also had the problem of becoming personally involved and thought that wouldn't be such a terrific idea either...

The trouble with being smart, in case no one knows this, is that sometimes it gives you too damn many options. So, by the time it was time to go to college, I still had no idea what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up. "What are you studying?" Liberal Arts. "Why?" Because I don't know what I want to major in. And there's no math requirement.

Which means that the summer after my freshman year at Syracuse, when I fell in love and got proposed to it was easy to say yes, with the understanding that I would still go back to school (because after all, I was smart) and finish my degree. Except he was in the Air Force and so there was more moving and then there were bills to pay and so instead I got a full time job. But someday, dammit, I would go back to school. Only, we got divorced after 5 years (because no one, no one, should ever get married at 19) and I moved 3,000 miles back home and now I was a "grown up" and needed to support myself and going back to school "right now" was a little out of the question, so for now I'm going to keep working in retail because I've been doing it for a while now, and I kinda like it and since I have management experience it's about the only freaking thing I can do that will allow me to support myself...and it turned out I was pretty good at it, but paying the bills was hard on the (no) money in retail, so a friend got me into the technology field, because one thing retail taught me was that I could sell the hell out of stuff. Socks, networking equipment, same-same.

And then I met the zookeeper (remember, he used to be network sales guy) and we got engaged and then we got preggers and we got married and then we got preggers again and then my neighbor found a snake in her  effing grill and the dot coms went dot broke and we got a zoo and I got a job to help support us while the zoo got off the ground...in retail. Only this time, I was going to really do it. Like, move up. Because when you are good at something, and you enjoy it, and you produce results, of course you are naturally going to move up right? Not so much, due to a little thing called The Peter Principle, and my previously mentioned inability not to call bullshit when I see it. Which left me in the very interesting position of being a secret weapon to clean up messes and yet still lacking the political clout to move up, working 60+ hours a week with the zookeeper doubling that (who says there's no competition in marriage?) and the daughters spending more and more time with a nanny and me spending more and more mulah on things like gas and nannies and not really making any mulah in the end and then this song came on the radio one night and I realized that Something Had to Change. Because the zookeeper had found his bliss and I was just holding on to nothing and there were the daughters, who drive me absolutely bonkers and yet are my very best creations and deserve so much more than they are getting.

We did the math and things with the zoo were going well and made the decision to begin the Great SAHM Experiment. And even that might have gone better if fricking Wall Street hadn't lost it's everlovin' mind and Lehman Brothers hadn't collapsed and we hadn't skidded our way on the back of bad credit and bad decisions into the biggest recession the world had seen in about a gazillion years. Don't talk to me about Austerity there, Greece. We lived it. When net revenues drop over 60% year over year in a business with high overhead to begin with (there are no food fairies to feed the animals and pay the staff, in case you were wondering) your life becomes a game of Can You? every. Single. Day. There isn't time to worry about the future when you are busy finding a way to get through the day….until you wake up one morning and realize that holy shit, your life pretty much went by while you were busy doing something else.

Go ahead, Poo, see if you can puzzle that one out.

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40 means no more gymnast dreams, unless you actually, you know, became a gymnast, no more "someday I'm gonna be on Broadway" or an English teacher or the Great American Novelist. 40 means that if you haven't figured out what you want to be when you grow up you are royally fucked, because the time for growing up is over.



Then came 41, when time marched on, and the laundry was always there, and the daughters, no matter how much cajoling and swearing I did continued to drive me fucking insane with the constant bickering and hollering for "MOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!" challenge me everyday and make me realize that they, too, were growning up and their needs were changing. We talked about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees and the Moon moved through the sky and time kept on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future. The zoo grew by leaps and bounds, meaning the zookeeper was busier than ever and there were backpacks to buy and projects to help with till I finally went back to work (part time) just to stay sane, and I won an award with my little singing group and and still was waiting to do all those things I was gonna do when I grew up

Turning 42? That was the worst. I had my little letter two years ago from the AARP to thank for reminding me that it was time, and time, and time to come to grips with my life so far. What, really, did that little girl who dreamed a dream of being a gymnast/witch/Charlie's Angel/Broadway Actress/Great American Author ever, really, do? What difference in the end, did I make?  So, I traded in the station wagon and bought a sports car, though I drew the line at making time with 19 year olds…

It took me a long time to figure out that life isn’t in the big moments and the high achievements.  We might measure it by these, but life really happens in the spaces in between.  Turns out that life is what you are doing while you are waiting for your life to be the way you want.  It isn’t about how much you did, but how many people you touched, and touched you.  It’s not about having your options narrowed, but about finding different options.  It’s about laughing, and loving, and not worrying so much about what others expect of you but about what you expect of yourself.  It’s looking in the mirror and saying I may not ever be perfect, but I’m the best me I can be right this very moment, and that’s all that counts.

I can’t say my midlife crisis is over.  Me and Oil of Olay look to be good friends for a while, and just because I’m turning 43 this year doesn’t mean I want to look 43 (and there will by-god be no granny panties for this zookeeper's wife.)  I can say that I have a better perspective on things.  And who knows?  I might not get to be an Olympic gymnast this time around, but I still have another 40 or so years to figure out what I want to be when I grow up…