40 the new 20?

Turning forty really wasn't such a big deal. I felt young, looked cute, was surrounded by people who'd made my life sweet, except, of course, for my husband who had to stay in Barbados to work.  Story of my life, the wife of a chef.  I felt like I could do anything and that 40 really was the new 20. But it's not the new 20, not for me.  Maybe 40 is the new 20 for people who had their kids right out of college, in their early 20s, and now find themselves empty-nesters while still hot, active and energetic.  I could use some of that energy right now.  I am bone tired and too old to be chasing after these people.  My kids are four and 17 months and are not considering, for one second, giving me a break.  More like breaking my back. 

I am sitting here in Barbados where the toads and creepy crawlies at night are chirping and burping and doing whatever their mad as a hatter conductor's got them doing and I am wondering how the heck I think I am going to make it on so little sleep again!  That is not a 20, that is so a 40 going on 60.  When I was twenty I could sleep three hours after a night of hellish partying or studying (mmm hmmm), open my eyes, brush the teeth, get on some clothes and stroll into the next day looking camera ready.  With five hours pasted together from all the stops and starts -- "I need a drink of water,"  nursing, checking diapers and beds for wetness, toads, toads, and more toads, a bit of snoring from the French nez next to me, and my oversaturated, never to have a kidney stone again bladder urging me out for one more go, I now wake up looking like I'd rubbed Vaseline all over my face, blinked in some sand, and gone to sleep with that white elementary school paste in my mouth.  It takes until about 11:30 am for that look to start wearing off. 

In my twenties I said funny things like, "I sometimes forget to eat.  I am just so busy," or "I just keep losing weight, I don't really know how."  I slept in, went to the movies on a whim, got funny looking haircuts that kind of looked cool, made love whenever, even wherever I wanted to (gasp!).  Now that is definitely not 40 over here.  (Imagining the look on Lily's face were we to allow ourselves that adventure.)  At twenty years old I lived for myself. Didn't have enough self-love or connection to anything really to love as I do now, to live as I do now. We have come to terms with the fact that we are older parents and that there will be some level of sacrifice to raising decent human beings.  We are none the worse for it. 

Maybe if we were back in New York with the lure of a nightlife worth committing to, museum exhibitions, gallery showings, concerts, lectures, adventures fun for the kids and parents alike, we might try to maintain a level of hipness, of cool.  Maybe in the youth culture perpetuated by the creativity, raw energy, and tension of the Big A, we would be working out, updating our looks, be able to show our children a little of the world's cultures all funneling into and surrounding the island.  But that would still, for me at least, have come with the wisdom of age.

Forty definitely feels like a beginning, but not a "just starting out in life" beginning, but the culmination of all those stops and starts, successes and failures, hideously beautiful moments that brought me to the place where I know one thing to be true. I love these people. I was meant for these people. I want to grow as a human being for these people and share the rest of my life with them. Even as they send me hurtling towards insanity or something close.  Sometimes the day to day is a real pain in the ass. We are tired and irritable and short-tempered. But the truth is, when I look at Didier, when Lily and Virginie wrap their arms around me and hug and kiss me, when I hear each of them breathing at night over the sound of those damned tree frogs, I don't want to be doing it with anyone else. There is a lot of life in my life right now and it is my experiences, getting to 40 that have given me the grace to appreciate it in spite of it all.   That's a good start.

(c)  Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.