avocado8

Big Birthday

I turned 35 this weekend. I am now what people used to consider "middle aged," though I believe that mark has moved to 45 or 50. I am now at the point where a pregnancy would be considered "high risk". I am now 10 years older than my dad was when I was born. And I feel GREAT. I am relatively healthy, I am meeting my financial obligations, and I am a hell of lot wiser than I was at 25... and yet in many ways I am still living the life of someone in her twenties.

It's ironic that a kid who was so grown up at 5, 10, and 15 that she used to scare parents and teachers would have such a delayed adulthood, but that has pretty much turned out to be the case for me. It's not that I delayed marriage and family for the sake of my career; it's that I haven't had marriage and family on my to-do list at all since I turned 18. I was willing (and excited!) to live my whole life as a single woman, with none of the markers people associate with adulthood except a few wrinkles. I saw no reason to give up jeans and baseball caps and Sketchers and Doc Martens just because I turned 25 or 30 or 35. Spending almost 10 years in the web and web-software worlds abetted that scheme, of course— I've worn jeans and t-shirts to work since 1995—but I'd declared myself a Dyes 'R Us kid even before that, when I worked at the World Bank. My years at Macromedia just never forced me to give up anything except my (admittedly barely-) business suits.

To my great surprise, I fell in love at 33 and got married a couple weeks before my 34th birthday, but even marriage hasn't really forced me to grow up. My husband and I have had great fun running around like kids, playing hockey, traveling around the country, and moving at will without regard to school districts. Sure, I don't go out to clubs and parties like I used to, and I pretty much stopped drinking when I experienced my first real hangovers around age 31 or 32, and yes, the kids will spot me as a geezer by the faint wrinkles and the requests to turn the music down, but by virtue of the fact that I am doing whatever I want whenever I want to, I feel like a kid.

Actually, now that I think about it... doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to was *not* a hallmark of my childhood (or even of my early twenties). This freedom is something new, perhaps something uniquely identified with my thirites. I remember my roommate Pat saying that her thirties were her favorite years, though 42 felt pretty darn good, too. (That was before the cancer diagnosis.) I can totally see why: financial freedom, personal freedom, experience enough to make smart choices (and the emotional maturity to recover faster from poor ones), and a body that's still in relatively good shape. (OK, my thyroid's a bit out of whack, and I have a couple other chronic conditions, but I'm fit and functional and in better shape than I was at 20.)

I don't feel old, I feel equipped. Ready for new adventures, to take on the world on my own terms, to defend my choices and my changes of mind. Maybe I haven't postponed adulthood after all—I've just experienced it differently than most. I've gotten to do it my way. How lucky am I for that?