Top Ten Reasons I Know I Am Getting Old

I remember the day clearly that I felt like I was an adult. It wasn't getting married or having children. No, it was the day I bought a melon baller. I stood at the cash register holding it and I remember thinking that the next step would be being trapped in suburbia, attending a tupperware party, where I would end up buying more single task kitchen items that I would have to store somewhere and only pull out a handful of times a year. Or worse yet, foisting a little booklet of avon products off to my neighbors and encouraging them to order skin so soft as an insect repellent.

Many, many, many years have passed since that day. I still own that handy little melon baller. I have never been to one of those insipid parties. Isn't it that same as rubbermaid? But I have been to a pampered chef party where I bought something and I love the satin hands hand creme from mary kay. And I make cute food for my kids. The march was inevitable, I guess.

Today I will decorate cupcakes so that the tops of them look like little baseballs for my two oldest son's baseball team in honor of their first home game. And hope I at least give the impression of being the good mother I long to be. Not to the other parents, I really couldn't care less what they think of me, but to my children. I hope it's enough.

**********

Today is also the eve of my birthday. A birthday which will no longer enable me to check the 25-35 year old box on surveys. A birthday which will force me from now on to check the box which states 36-dead, or whatever it says.

I present the top ten reasons why I know I am getting old.

10) I use the word comfortable when describing my ideal clothing and the word practical when shopping for shoes. I look at the "fashionable" clothes that teenagers are wearing, and laugh. Though I will go on record saying that I will never wear stockings with open toe shoes. Why do old people do this? Was this ever a good look? Or is it just that they have become so practical that they want to keep their feet warm and wear the shoes they like?

9) I was buying my son vintage globes on ebay for his collection and noticed the globes are younger than I am. I realized I could say, "I remember when toys were made out of tin..." Soon the toys I played with as a child will be called antiques.

8)I have uttered the phrase, "When I was a kid..." and the music I grew up listening to is played on the radio at a special day and time called the "Way Back Weekend". And you know the next step is calling it the "oldies but goodies" . Who knew it was possible to wax nostalgic about the seventies and eighties.

7) I have a child who wears clothes bigger than mine.

6) I have known my husband and been married for a third of my life.

5) Every time I get the slightest ailment I think I am dying and should seek out a specialist. I worry more than I should about dying and leaving my children motherless. And I worry about what they would remember about me.

4) I have a "condition", albeit a minor one, and own a daily pill container, fulfilling one of my life's greatest fears.

3) When I look down at my hands I see the hands of my mother.

2)I frequently find myself wistful for my body the way it looked in my early twenties, because from my vantage point now, I realize that was as good as it was going to get. Who knew? I wouldn't have been caught dead in the body I have now.

1) I can buy myself whatever I want for my birthday, but like Ponce de Leon the only thing I want I can't buy. Though my area of exploration is limited to the cosmetics counter in my local department store.