You Are Too Old to Stop Feeling Youthful: Finding Our Mothers at Midlife
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
We all seriously need badass moms, even if they actually are someone else’s
Midlife is chock-full of gains and losses, not the least of which is our identity as a young mother. I never went that route, but those of my friends who did are entering their middle years with a bit of discomfort as their identities shift from sexy baby mommy to middle-aged (hag).
Okay I said it.
Far too often, that’s our self-identity, as that which made us so attractive to males as younger women gives way to having that role now filled by our daughters.
Not everyone weathers this well, as many writers have expressed on various online platforms. When I was in midlife, I didn’t even have email, much less an online platform on which to discuss, reveal and revel in what changes my life and body were undergoing. Midlife to me is a grey memory.
Except for my mother, for those were her final years.
Perhaps that allowed me some kind of grace. Perhaps not. What I do know is that right about the time I turned 47, my mother’s health deteriorated to the point where I had to move back to Colorado from my perch in the Pacific Northwest (then Spokane) .
Not too close, six hours away, but at least in the same state.
I knew Mom well enough to know that too much company was dangerous. We could nearly come to fisticuffs over idiot details.
“You haven’t been here since July.”
“Yes I have, Mom, I was here July 15th for four days.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Here are my diary, my journal, my Daytimer, my travel notes, Mom, four days, July 15th-19th.”
“You wrote it down wrong.”
And so on.
It was crazy-making, she knew it, reveled in it and never let up. I would need to leave for my own sanity.
Long before I came along, my parents, both of them flush with youth, childless and with excellent jobs in a WWII-era Washington DC, swore they would never have any “brats.”
By 1951, by then living on a farm in Central Florida, my mother gave birth to the first of two of us brats. It was the beginning of the end of her tiny hips, her unlined face and her high-society hopes.
She would bequeath me a passionate love of books and classical music. Unbeknownst to me at the time, as I never witnessed this part of her, she also gave me a love of horses, language and the arts, gifts which, by osmosis, filled my childish soul.
She was also wickedly stylish, which she also bequeathed me, albeit mine was a dim bulb compared to hers.
Above all, as the harsh Florida sun remade her face, her lasting gift was her wicked sense of humor. Despite my father’s late-in-life bitterness and bad behavior, this buoyed her no matter what.
By the time my mother died at 91, having seen the turn of the century but not long enough to see a Black president (one of my parents’ great hopes), she had fallen in love again and had sex after decades of barren years. She had lost her sight but never ever her laugh.
She was incredibly youthful, even as her body shrank. With great pride she would tell her doctor that she was 5’7”, tall for her time, long after her spine had curved her to 5’3.” She knew it, said it with a twinkle in her nearly-blind eyes, and then did her best butt-jiggle to embarrass the doctor.
I lost my mother before I turned fifty. I was a late-in life baby. But I was also old enough, just enough, to begin to appreciate what she’d given me even as I ran headlong from her barbs and abuses.
Her aging body broke her heart but not her spirit.
You and I are WAY Too Old not to have outrageous, youthful mamas to inspire us at midlife.
All this was unearthed by this gorgeous article that I found on The Cut.
It isn’t just that the author, Monica Corcoran Harel, is nearly the same age as I was when I lost my mother. It’s that her deep appreciation for her sexy, funny, lively mom, whom she calls Veronica, speaks in part to what I wish I’d had.
Here’s my favorite quote:
At 82, Veronica goes out to jazz clubs and art openings — and sometimes sleeps until noon the next day with her cat, ZouZou. She meets friends for Moroccan food and flirts with younger men. And she still applies that cleft in her chin, too. Just watching my mom’s third act unfold gives me hope that our later decades aren’t all about Mephisto slides and slipped discs. Reflecting on her metamorphosis at 48 reminds me that women in midlife are at their most powerful. I think that’s why men have historically tried to make them feel invisible after 40. As we stroll, I realize my mom continues to be my inspiration for aging well. Maybe you can enjoy the ride all the way to the end. Maybe I can love my third act as much as my midlife. “I’m thinking of getting my teeth whitened,” she says. “Me too,” I say and take her arm in mine. (author bolded)
We might all be so fortunate.
I was, in my own way, albeit I wasn’t as able to appreciate who and what my mother was. I wanted her to be something she was incapable of being. As a result, my recalcitrance too often denied both of us the chance to enjoy the hell out of each other.
I was at times guilty of trying to get my mother to act her age. That was before I hit midlife myself, and learned the heartbreaking ugliness of those words. After a while, I began to appreciate how alive my mother was, how her humor, her irreverence and her boisterous laugh were her Fountain of Youth even as my seriousness was carving lines in my much younger face.
Over time I’ve collected a great many other “mothers.” They vary in culture, color, education, country, across so many different iterations that their rich variety boggles the mind. All of them mothered me differently, and all of them taught me how to age in ways that I find myself using today.
Harel’s article is a reminder that so many of us have a chance to experience our parents as both equals and adults- inasmuch as we are able at any given time- before they fade. I’ve read several heartbreaking articles about parents near death or still living but their minds elsewhere, when that chance has long gone.
Then, they are children, needing diapers and cuddling and crooning to. My parents died with their faculties intact. I never realized how fortunate I was until recently.
Every Friday night, Mom and her boyfriend in California read rude, crude limericks across the miles and miles of life, love, longing and the states that separated them.
That final Friday night after they hung up, giggling like adolescents, the waters carried my mother away, a smile on her face, a secret kept.
The only state that separated my mother and me was my inability to see her as she was. Even so, like Veronica, my mother taught me a thousand lessons about how to age, laugh long and hard and unapologetically, and to jiggle my ass in the face of life.
Let’s play.
Mothers’ Day is coming. For those of us whose birth mothers are gone, let’s remember them as best we can. For those of us for whom our moms are still around, and we are in touch, I hope we can appreciate them. Sometimes that’s quite impossible and I honor that. That said I hope this piece inspired you to appreciate yours, especially if you are in midlife, and a mom yourself which I am not. If so, please consider
If you know a daughter who could use a reminder to see her mother as a person outside her mom-role, please consider
Either way, thank you. Just, thank you.
Ahhh this one has so many layers for me! My mom is a very healthy 76 and she still wants to travel the world. But she wants me to come with her instead of finding a travel group of women her age. I fear that she'll die waiting for me 😂 I'm not in that space right now. Having said that, I am fortunate enough to be neighbors with her...we live on the same street (which is probably why I don't ALSO want to travel with her!) We see each other every day.
She's been single for at least 30 years and relies a lot on me for a social life. It's hard for me but at the same time, I try my best because I know she won't be a round forever. I just wish she'd forget about me for a minute and go find some companion people to travel with!
I’m an “old” mum since I had my children at 35, 38 and 41. They are still small but one thing that i discovered with motherhood and aging (44 now) is that it didn’t change who I am one bit. I’m still loud, love to be goofy and can make a joke out of everything really. And the best bit is that I don’t have to pretend to be someone else. I’m also now seeing how my mother was “a mother and a wife” for the most of my life and now she is discovering all these other sides of herself at 70. It’s a marvel to see. Anyway, I really liked your post.