I nearly found myself apologizing to the barista at Starbucks yesterday for not being employed. Although I only sometimes ponder my enforced unemployment on a deep and meaningful level, I haven’t been ashamed of it, yet. And it would be hard to find a reason to be ashamed. According to the latest census, Alberta has the highest two parent family rates in the country. Well over 70% with the majority still being married couples as opposed to common-law. The county we live in has the highest per capita income levels of the province and even without much of a sample to poll, it is becoming very clear to me that many women here have just part time jobs, if they work at all. Frankly, I am more ashamed to be lumped in with the SAHM crowd than I am to actually being jobless. Most conversations center around children. The ones you have. The ones your kids interact with. Those who are related to you in some fashion and, of course, the ones you think aren’t being raised all that well. It makes me a bit nostalgic for the teachers’ lounge. Read Full Article
Identity
I was cranky yesterday. It was a fat day. Even though I weighed the same amount of weight that I did the day before and today, I still felt enormous and was irritatingly aware of the way my clothes felt and the space I took up. Rob wasn’t helpful “Not much I can do about that,” he said, but he was at least superficially sympathetic. (Not sympathetic at all, he corrected me with a shrug when he first read this. The man will just not let me harbor any illusions.) Men don’t have fat days. They lament the loss of strength, hair, stamina and skill (and not necessarily in that order), but they never think they are fat. Of course, men aren’t held to the same standards that even old women like me are and with reason. I can’t count the number of times I have seen couples together where the women are so much more visibly aged than the men. But, yesterday I felt fat. And it made me cranky. And the reason it did was that, like the Toby Keith song, “I ain’t as good as I once was.”
I can’t get by on little or no sleep anymore. It takes longer to get back into passable physical shape. I like evenings on the couch (well, okay that doesn’t really count as I have always enjoyed a good snuggle and anything else it might lead to, but you get what I mean, I’m sure) more than nights out sometimes. I am finding myself listening to oldies from my junior high and high school days more and more, and I don’t even count those days as the best of my life because fat, (drunk for some) and stupid is no way to go through life. I am not pleased by the wrinkling I see, or the grays that my new hair stylist needlessly pointed out by way of explaining why he needed to over-lighten my bangs. Not to put too fine a point on it ……I’m old! When did this happen? And why didn’t I notice it before now? Maybe I could have done something about it?
And it’s not just me. Rob was a bit morose last evening too (not about me having a fat day. He thinks that whole idea is ridiculous), but because he spent quite nearly the whole day working on a reno project to find himself not done when dusk arrived, and worse, not inclined to drag out the spot lights and work into the night to finish it up. He would have once. Back in a not really that long ago day. When he was young….ger.
Old. Alright, alright….middle-aged, but this forty is the new thirty thing is just boomer nonsense. When I look at photos of famous women, who I know are older than I am, I don’t see well-preserved. I see women who are older than I am and lucky to have good make-up, better lighting and a photographer with a great photoshop program.
I am not sure what it is. My child starting kindergarten when most people my age are celebrating empty nests or the fact that my 25th high school reunion is around the corner and I have been getting in touch with old friends. Old ones. People I have known now for twenty plus years. My friend Lisa and I go back to fifth grade. That’s more than thirty years ago. Relationships outside your original immediate family and relations that you can measure in decade increments is humbling. And it really adds to that whole “Damn, I’m old!” thing.
But, I feel better about my wizening today. After all, many people still misjudge my true age by a good five or more years in the direction of thirty-something. I am actually thinner than I was before my child was born. A note-worthy achievement because, and most women know this to be true, your stomach is never the same again. I am not ignorant of current music and cultural. No time warp here. I don’t need reading glasses. Really. My optometrist says so. And most important of all, my husband thinks I have a great bum. What more could a forty-ish woman want or need?
During the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (a truly awful affront to die hard Trekkies in the opinion of my husband, and I whole-heartedly concur) there is an episode where Picard and his crew find themselves saddled with the descendants of a group of space colonists after their planet is threatened with solar flares. They come to discover that the expedition that founded this colony had a sister ship that was lost, leading Picard to search for them in hopes of finding a new home for these refugees who are now setting out to settle one of the Enterprise’s landing bays. His search leads them to a planet of clones, descendants, of sorts, of the missing second ship and it’s occupants. The clones are suffering from “replicative fading” and will die out without fresh DNA infusions into their society which they try to unsuccessfully steal from the Enterprise crew. At the end of the episode, Picard unites the long separated groups after realizing that each can help the other with their problems. The first group by “loaning” their DNA through reproduction, and the second by offering a new planet to settle on. What I remember the most about this episode is the scene at the very end when it is revealed that the women in both groups will have to engage in polygamous marriages in order to keep inbreeding at bay. Reverse polygamy by the way, not the kind that is so often forced upon females by religious groups as man and harem, but a woman with multiple husbands.
This episode came to mind when I was reviewing my present situation. I am a polygamist. I am Rob’s wife, and I am the house’s wife. I know for a fact that I find the former more satisfying than the latter. My relationship with Rob is a give and take, whereas the house takes. Oh, I know that some would argue the house gives too….in its own way. Shelter. Warmth. Safety. But does it have a choice really? What it takes in time, sweat, and Rob…. from me doesn’t make it’s contributions seem as great. In some ways, Rob is more of the house’s bitch than I am. Where it expects near constant cleaning from me, it demands structural upkeep from him that can be downright hazardous. Tonight for example he is replacing the back landing. Masonry needed to be removed as well as framing and floor. While the house passively observes, Rob saws and hammers, dodging exposed nails and his own efforts too judging from the ripped shirt and the bruised elbow he is confident will bring much by way of sympathy and consolation later on. Ah, to be known so well already.
I think the house suspects I don’t love it as much as I do Rob. It was an arranged marriage after all, not the love match Rob and I have. I guess it would be hard to live with the knowledge you will always be second best. Still I do my best to give the house what it needs. It should feel better knowing that I clean it more than I ever cleaned the last house I lived in. Truthfully, I have had a deep fondness for this place from the first night I walked in. Disorganized and in as much need of purging as where I was living at the time, it still said “home” to me and welcomed me. Ghosts and all, I knew I would love this place and I do. But like any polygamist, I have my favorite mate and the house will just have to learn to adjust.
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