It's the age where you feel it all. It's old and it's real and it's no more going back pretending to be 20's or anything at all youngish and they stop carding you and not everyone tells you happy birthday because you're just too damn big now to be precious about this continual celebration each year.
I'm 37 today.
The day started with a smear of poop of my thigh. Not mine, my son's. Thank god. He woke up and ran around with the dog before I was coherent enough to say stop running around come here you smell like caca. When I opened my eyes enough to register he'd dropped his diaper on the bedroom floor, I got him and changed him whilst he uttered, I think, "I pooped!" Then I saw it on my leg. He did indeed. Happy birthday to me change my pants before I get coffee.
We went to the park and the boy played on the toys while I threw the ball for the dog. It wasn't our usual empty park where Maisie can roam off the leash freely without scornful looks to which I'm like, do you see I'm with a small child, do you think me with a small child would bring a bitey dog to a public place you idiots. Ugh, people are the worst. Anyway, there was a group of developmentally disabled adults at this park and I love DD adults they are not the worst at all. I used to work with them and so one I complimented on his running pace and he helped me find the dog's ball. Another man, nearly 300 pounds, cowered on his hands and knees like a scared cat on the wall when Maisie got close saying, "dog dog dog!" I said, "She's nice, don't worry, honey, she won't scare you, look she's on a leash, I'll hold her until you walk by." But he didn't budge and so we walked away.
Another woman, she followed us around and wanted to hang on to Maisie's leash, too, while I was holding it. Her name was Pya or Piah, perhaps, she didn't say anything except her name and she hung out with us for about a half an hour, wordlessly walking with us. Alexander wasn't bothered, here was another adult person who liked his dog and with whom his mother was walking along.
The interactions, of course, reminded me of being a child and my mom bringing home her charges from the hospital/home in the early 80's, those with Down's Syndrome and developmental disabilities to hang out with a young family, eat dinners and color with her young daughters on the floor. They were the best, full grown adults totally interested in what we wanted to do - color pictures in our books and play dolls and house and whatever else - it was awesome to have that attention! Also, being a young college student in San Francisco and working with DD adults during the workdays at their jobs. I can't put my finger on it, and I gave it some thought today too, but I feel quite at ease around those who don't experience the social public world in a "normal" social way. (Maybe this also accounts for my compulsive urge to always want to make eye contact with strangers on the elevator?)
After much playing on toys and scaring away ducks, we go to leave the park to have lunch with my sister. Alexander, of course, didn't want to leave and went all "spaghetti" on me - this is where he falls to the ground and refuses to walk in public places. Meanwhile the dog takes a giant conspicuous shit while the baby's limp on the grass unconvinced he should stand up and I have no baggie; normally I would suck and walk away like
what poop I have a spaghetti-ing toddler here but this lady's staring me down all
are you gonna pick that up! that poor man's already scared of dogs! and scared-of-dogs dude's is frozen in fear a few feet away and so I just have to say SIT dog and COME WITH ME baby scooping him howling up while I get a baggie from the conveniently provided shit baggie stand 100 yards away ("doggies keep your owners on a leash!! it says, the cutesy passive aggressive city! woof woof!) and ugh, I have to PICK UP POOP ON MY BIRTHDAY while holding a limp wailing 30-pound human on my hip and a straining 70-pound dog on a leash and this is not easy. I'm not saying I should get out of picking up dog crap in a public place but okay, yes I am.
Things improve from here! I get a new iPhone, waiting for me at lunch from the husband, and lunch is waiting from my sister arriving early and ordering for us all! There's cake afterward in the parking lot! We go home and naptime only requires one "going in" to resettle! Jim and I go out to drinks and dinner and a concert and it's great! We spontaneously extend the evening with a drive up to see the city lights and it's beautiful.
At one point this evening I was overcome with a giant surge of gratitude. It was one of those fleeting, probably getting my period soon, kinda rushes of emotion that makes you look away because suddenly your eyes are tearing up out of context. We'd just ordered (burgers and gin and tonic at a live-music venue) and I felt like I could just order up anything I wanted in life. It sounds so stupid now, but I felt like it was that easy - what would you like? And I could decide and it would eventually be attainable.
My needs have shifted, I think, because my desires have been tempered by motherhood. It's changed everything for the better, brought it into focus. All I could think about tonight was how much I wanted to grow a good, stable family, to be in that place in the city-lights-viewing-area where we could have a perspective on the mountains, the ocean, the city, to feel our place in this place - to raise up kids who know deep where they come from and can always come back to that place no matter how old and find their truest selves.
37. It's the age when everything shifts focus off of me in the autumn, and instead, it falls onto what I am caretaking through this coming winter and next spring and beyond, times infinity until the last winter or spring or whenever I go. I matter still, of course, but in a new way where I'm undercurrent, the bouying wave, the supporting swell, the one who holds up the smallest because they are learning all of it and I've already been through and around the world and I'm safe and might know something and I'll show you a good way to go. Or at least how to deal with the inevitable poop life throws in your path.
