I’m getting old. Not ancient, mind you, just old. I’m older than most of the teachers I had in elementary school, but not as old as dirt or fossils. Although, when I was six, my 24 year old teacher seemed as old as dirt.
I probably feel older since I’m pregnant. Most of the pregnant girls around me are just that. Girls. They wear low slung jeans with cute little maternity tops stretched taut against their round little bellies. They sport tans and have “knuckles” that were already perky, but now have the added plus of being a cup size larger.
I’m still wearing the old style of maternity jeans that have a wide elasticized panel that pulls all the way up to my breasts, which truthfully isn’t much of a stretch. Technically, the panel now lies nicely under ol’ Betty and Bertha, and there ain’t nothing perky about that.
Youthful women, with elastic skin that will snap back into place a month after junior arrives, are energetically responding to all the exciting changes taking place in their bodies as they embrace their first pregnancy. I’m dragging through pregnancy number five, discovering stretch marks in new and unusual places, and praying that I don’t get my pre-pregnancy body back.
Our newest addition is scheduled to arrive on December 28th, eight days after my 38th birthday. Last year hubby asked what I wanted to do for my birthday. I thought about it for a long time because he normally doesn’t ask and the day passes with very little fanfare.
My thirtieth birthday was sort of special. That was the year two kids woke up with chickenpox and I correctly estimated that the third would break out on Christmas morning.
As I was relocating ornaments the kids had haphazardly placed on the Christmas tree, I pondered hubby’s question. He was lying on the couch with his eyes closed because I kicked him off Christmas tree decorating duty 15 years ago when he offered to put the lights on and it took him all of about thirty seconds.
Finally, I announced, “This year I think I’d like to celebrate my birthday the same way we did when I turned twenty.”
Hubby continued lying perfectly still, eyes closed. I thought he had fallen asleep but he was actually thinking very hard. Finally, in a flat tone, he admitted, “I don’t remember your 20th birthday.”
I was shocked. “You’re kidding? How could you forget something like that?”
With eyes still closed he replied, “I can’t remember what happened yesterday, let alone twenty years ago.”
“It has not been twenty years,” I gasped.
“Pert near,” he mumbled.
“Pert near? Who says that?” I began to mock, and then it hit me.
As my aging brain slowly did the math I realized that it has indeed been pert near twenty years since my twentieth birthday. I began to stumble backwards, tripping over tinsel, and nearly crushing the glass ball in my hand. I was hyperventilating so heavily that hubby actually lifted his head from the couch and opened one eye to make sure I was okay.
In a blur of realization other things in my life started to make sense. For months I’d been laboring under the delusion that my eye makeup applicator was faulty because it kept dragging the skin to the outer edges of my eyelids and leaving eye shadow skidmarks. As reality set in I realized that it wasn’t a faulty applicator, but rather the skin on my eyelids had become loose!
I looked at hubby. How dare he lay there, quietly resting after dropping a bombshell like that? And why did the crinkles in the corners of HIS eyes have to look so darn handsome? Jerk!
I started to reconsider my birthday request. Did I really want to get up at the crack of dawn and fix a giant breakfast and then cuddle together in the living room all day watching “Gone with the Wind?” I wouldn’t be able to stay awake for the entire movie, and my bones would start to ache from being in the same position for too long. I’d also have to keep getting up to go the bathroom, which would totally detract from the marathon movie experience. And while my 20th birthday ended with a bit of romance under the Christmas tree, nowadays I don’t think my joints could handle nooky on the hard living room floor.
Come to think of it, maybe I am as old as dirt.
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