In a family way: Paging aging rock stars

Sunny adventure at the pool. The 4-year-old is at the top of the big-kid slide, dipping her toes into the rushing water, then WHOOSH off she goes like a rocket ship. Her 18-month-old sister strains her chubby body against mine in the baby pool. She wants to climb up the big-kid slide, too. And she would, if I had the fool sense to let her, even though the gushing water and slick plastic slide would propel her tiny, almost gelatinous frame right into outer space.

Photo by Flickr user Therapycatgarden

Man, I remember this. I remember this feeling, standing on the edge of the big-kid slide for the first time. Pushing, pushing against my mother and my relative youth so that I could do everything my big brother did: Whether that was playing four-square even after the sun set, or jetting across the country for college. Growing up, hitting all those milestones both big and infinitely small was so much fun.

Only now I’m at the point where I’m closer to 40 than I am to 30 and I want everything to slow down. I was telling my friend Christine some minor gripe about loading my small children into their car seats, and she gamely tells me this: Her teen daughter just hops into her own car, and drives her own self anywhere she wants to go.

It goes fast. WHOOSH.

There’s a comfort to being a grown woman, though. A bittersweet comfort. In those heady days of summer slides and jetting off to college, the world was my oyster. Now, much later, there is that strange realization: You know, I never will be a Supreme Court Justice, after all. And I know for a fact that I won’t be the youngest astronaut to walk in space, and I won’t become the It Girl muse of some lead singer in a rock band, unless he’s rather old and into happily married suburban mothers.

It’s disconcerting in its own quiet and comfortable way. On the one hand and the other, it’s a pretty awesome feeling to wake up each morning and not have to prove anything, not have the overwhelming desire to please everyone or impress anyone. Guess that’s what makes being a grown woman so much like that little kid at the pool. It’s all those years in between that can be a bit dodgey.

— By Erika Stutzman
erika@womensmag.com

Check out these other articles