Over the Hill

I stared at the chocolate cake, not sure whether to exhale or cry. Four decades couldn’t have flown by so fast. It simply wasn’t possible. Didn’t I graduate from high school just last June? But there on my birthday cake flickered the undeniable evidence: forty pink candles pooling into Ghirardelli puddles. Each candle shouted a unanimous chorus of: “Welcome to Middle Age!”

“Am I officially ‘over the hill’” now?” I later grumped to my husband, Chris. He celebrated my entre into “Middle Age” in dry-humored fashion with a bouquet of black roses. And truckloads of chocolate. My four boys combined their resources to buy forty mylar balloons. They meant well. It was the sight of FORTY “Over the Hill” balloons crammed into our living room that got me thinking: “Is it really all downhill from here?”

Perched up here in the Nose Bleed section, my view from “The Hill” is really pretty good. Considering the alternative, that is. And what part of The Hill I’m tackling: bottom, top, or far side. I’ve realized I must choose how to navigate this knoll—on hands and knees, sliding face-first, or traveling light. So I’ve made a decision. Before fielding any more snide remarks about “candles costing more than the cake,” I’ve decided to think of “forty something” like this: “Compared to a Bristlecone Pinetree, I’m just a wet-behind-the-ears whipper-snapper!”

It works pretty well. Except when I take my new attitude out for a “test drive” with my ten-year-old. He knows everything. Especially how ancient and archaic I am!

I didn’t mind so much until the other day when he pipes up with, “Hey mom, did they have cars when you were a little girl?”

Just how old does that kid think I AM?!

Not quite old enough to have reached full-blown senility I guess, as I immediately shot back, “Yeah, but we had to watch out for the dinosaurs.”

I felt pretty smug about that witticism. For about a day. Then he asks, “Mom, what’s a record album? How did you listen to anything without a CD player?” 

I didn’t even TRY explaining eight-tracks, black-and-white TV, or carbon paper. He’s still trying to figure out how anyone changed channels without a remote or made dinner sans microwave.