33. Mother (one hell of a job).

I am almost 42. I had kids back when I was 28 and 31. That would be in the grungy 90s. Kurt Cobain and my cat died. And OJ had his trial.

When I was pregnant there were no stylish maternity clothes. There were expensive specialty stores like Pea in the Pod, which had its special full body catsuit and other such good ideas. The suit pulled up on the whole body. Pregnant ladies need to go to the bathroom more than the non-pregnant. Not a good innovation. You could also shop at Kmart. They had some excellent little numbers with the baby on board and all that. Mostly you just ended up wearing your husband's outsized (on you) flannels. I did even try to go to our local Garment Gallery to try and find some old 70s panel pants. The people there pretended not to speak English (seriously). I felt helpless and unhelped. We didn't have Target.

We barely had cell phones. The cell phones there were in our town had these giant cases/chargers that had to come with the giant phones. I don't think we even had the internet and we had film cameras, obviously no photo phone. To make phone calls, Dave used a phone card issued from our local phone company (he worked out of town). That was how one kept in touch back then. They still had pay phones, phone booths.

My kids are now 13 and 10. My oldest's voice is changing and he is much taller than me. The schools give them drug and sex training. Now Jonny knows you can sniff glue. It would have never struck him to sniff glue. They read the whiteout label and laugh because there are so many warnings (explosive, fire, poison) on it that they wonder if it could possibly blow up the world. But they never would have thought to sniff it.. The old joke with Wayne about “my daddy smokes pot” was always “my daddy smokes pop” til drug training.

When my youngest came home from sex ed parent night, he burst in the door screaming to his brother, “ Oh it's disgusting, the boy has to put his penis in a hole in the girl”. My oldest just said “uuugggghhh”.

These days quite a few of my friends are having babies. At my age. Babies are soo lovely. I am tempted to want an old age baby. Kind of.

The agony of your babies getting old and so potentially being harmed by entering the world is excruciating. The pain of knowing that if you do your job well, the people you love most on the planet will need to leave you. That you will no longer be able to see them every day… This is not a fun job.

And I read how brilliant everyone thinks they are. Having babies. (Not all my friends are like this- I mean it in a general world-view way). And I am crumbling just crumbling as life gets closer and closer to taking my children away. My only hope is they go away happy as opposed to scarred by that one horrible incident that is always possible. As their mom, I have to hold it together and not take it out on them.

Thank goodness we have watched Get A Life (not really for kids). Because when we start bantering about won't you please live with me forever? They say, Mom, Do you mean like Chris Peterson? And we all laugh as I sit there drinking my coffee in my bathrobe.

2/24/08