Stuck in the Future

I have a dear friend who’s husband is going through a mid-life crisis at 38.  I’ve known them both for many years, even before they got married or started dating.  My sister asked about them last Sunday and I explained the crisis that had gripped the husband.  “So he’s left her?  He’s gotten an apartment and he’s gone back to living single?”  No, I explained, he’s undecided.  “So he’s still at home with his family?” she asked, confused.  “Sometimes.” I said, unclear myself. “But sometimes not.  Sometimes he’s back to his old family guy self, other times he’s trying to relive the past.  He’s trying to figure out what he wants to do.”  My sister said that it didn’t make sense.  I grunted a little.  “I’m not going to say I condone what he’s doing but I kind of understand it.  We’ve gone through it. We just didn’t have kids and a mate to watch us do it and suffer the consequences.” 

I’d come up with that while talking to her.  I’d sounded just like her for the past month while I was a listening ear but at that moment I looked back on my recent years and what I’d gone through.  At 38, I too had tried with all my might to remind myself of the best times of my youth.  I’d fulfilled my dreams I’d written down when I was 10, convinced myself that the achiness I felt in my body after doing regular tasks was laziness that I had to work out, decided that age was not going to catch me, and made a list of all my regrets I could recall.  I’d taken a good hard look at my personality flaws and after a year or so, decided what I could live with and what had to change in order for me to keep my self-respect in any kind of shape.  It was tough and brutal; I had many a wine-filled weekend where I just cried for two solid days and felt sorry for myself.  I did all this on my own time and at my leisure.  The only constant interruption was work and walking my dogs.  My dogs don’t really ask me why I’m crying as I walk or why I’m not in a talkative mood for days at a time.  I work with women so they know when to back off and let a woman have her reconstruction time.  Three of my co-workers are a little shy of 50 and had warned me of impending mental illness as I cried over my spent youth and upcoming adulthood. 

Some people welcome this time in their lives.  They can’t wait.  They have children on purpose because they await with open arms the waves of years to wash over them.  They’re excited about their mistakes and can’t wait to benefit from them. They take their place in the world early on – solid in the satisfaction that this is what being a part of mankind is all about.

 

Others of us have chronic “Peter Pan” syndrome and believe that time should stop for us and repercussions should be selective.  Youth is a place, not a time and aging is an evil task master that must be outrun at all costs.  Sometimes you get caught up with having a good time and wake up one day to find that you’ve been robbed.  Robbed of surprise, innocence, ignorance.  You no longer get that euphoric feeling of experiencing something for the first time – you can relate everything to something else you’ve done or experienced.  And like a sugar addict coming off bread, you get angry about it sooner or later.  The indecisiveness sets in – sometimes you’re happy you’re grown up and knowledgeable but sometimes you wish you could get away with some of the stuff you did when you were younger.  Finally (and thank God the learning curve is sharp), you realize this is a no-win situation and you should cut your losses, cherish what you have accomplished and change what you can.  This is my first year out of the “crazy years” and I feel calmer each day with less sadness.  But, like I said, I did that at my leisure with really good friends and family that interjected periodically.  My friend has a whole family in his wake.  His tantrums will be the building blocks for relationships for his children and his wife is becoming shell-shocked.

My sister shook her head at my explanation and though she too is going through her transformation without any casualties, she explained that not everyone has that luxury – especially when they bring children into the world.  We sat in silence for a few moments, both thinking our own thoughts about our own father, who’d lost his mind early in our lives and when he recovered, he had a new family.   I could see why we would not cut anyone any slack over this situation.  Either way, I realized that there were a great many of us stuck in the future, unable to travel back and forth at will, disgusted that time had solidified on us and left us to age with the rest of humanity. 

One the same day somewhere in time...

I had a birthday recently.  Though most people may associate this with parties and unbridled happiness, my birthday comes at the exact center of the year and stands for nothing more than more bills than usual to pay.  One of the most suspenseful of bills is the long tradition of getting my car emissions done in order to register my car.  I have a penchant for older cars with lots of health problems.  If I was a 6 foot blonde, I'd have a history of dating men on life support.  For the past 10 years or so, the week before my birthday was spent visiting various emission stations to see the machine with the most issues that would pass my oil leaking, coughing, clanking car.  This year was no different.  8 months ago I fell for a 19 year old Saab with imported health problems (i.e. expensive) and finally found an emission station that took such old boys and spoke Swedish.  While sitting in the waiting room praying to the car gods, I came face to face with a version of myself from the future.


She pulled up in a fairly new car - it looked maybe 5 years old at the most.  It was a sedan/van hybrid but still hip for the 75 year old woman that parked it and came inside the waiting room.  She asked for emission testing also and the service guy told her she was after me.  She looked at me, smiled and came over to sit down.  She was really old but dressed to the nines.  White suit, periwinkle blouse that was low enough to show a fancy gold necklace and white sandals.  She had a white patent snake-skin clutch to match and her toes and fingernails were the same shade of purple as her blouse.  She was made up like she'd done her makeup a thousand times with products that I could never afford.  Her hair was a reddish blonde and cut short like Dorothy Hamill’s used to be in the 80’s.  The only thing that showed her true age was her wrinkly and spotty skin and the fact that she walked hunched a bit and very slow.


She chatted like older people were taught was polite to do.  When she mentioned that she had to get her emissions before Saturday, I mentioned that my birthday was also on Saturday and that was also the reason I was there.  She looked at me longingly and smiled slowly.  “Oh, I’ve got a lot of years on you, dear.”  For the first time in a long time, I was impolite by mistake and agreed with her.  Somehow the conversation got onto the using the internet to pay your taxes and she bewailed that nothing good had ever come of her using the internet.  Her granddaughter had gotten her on Facebook awhile back and a guy from her college years had looked her up.  “College was over 100 years ago,” she said, touching her face. “and he found out I was recently single again.  He told me he’d had a crush on me all these years since college and sent me a picture of himself then and now.”


I nearly fell off my chair.  Before my eyes, she transformed back into a 19 year old petite winsome creature with blonde highlights and fresh skin.  She was probably really perky and didn’t have a shortage of friends or admirers.  Then I thought of this pimple faced lanky guy sitting outside the wooden doors of a Auburn University classroom waiting for the woman he fantasized about day and night to come out so he could ask to carry her books.  She’d giggle, look around at her girlfriends and tell him he was a sweetie before chatting off down the hall.


“What did you do?” I exclaimed.  “Did you recognize him?”
 

“I did.” She said as her voice trailed off a bit.  “But it’s been over 50 years.” She screwed her face up in realization of logic. “That was just weird; to contact me like that.  That’s just weird.”


It hit me then that it would never stop.  This game between the sexes was time proof.  If we lived to be 1,000, someone somewhere would always have a story to tell about the mating ritual between men and woman.  Even if you found “the one” as some people believe, in this world, someone always dies first and then you’re back at square one.  Deciding to date, learning how and who to talk to, proclaiming your undying love to those you’ve known before.  Here was a woman, born on the same day I was, in the same situation as I was – single and deciding if or when to become involved in a relationship – 35 years apart and two totally different lives.  I felt the earth stop moving for a second – at least for me – and my outlook on life shifted.
 

The service guy came in then and told me that my car had broken his machine and that I had to go somewhere else.  The older woman was also grumpy about that and mumbled that the traffic would be horrible on her way home.  Before I went back to panic mode about the car, I patted the woman on her knee and told her it was a pleasure to meet her.  It was – more than she would ever know.

 

Fighting Boredom...

Quick blog post...I know it's been awhile but I am still amidst the adventures of having an all-season boyfriend.  I have learned a lot - patience is NOT my virtue - but it does come in handy more often than not.

Now I'm dealing with the "boredom" issue.  I seek advice from those frequent boyfrienders or (ACK!) married people.

The boy is now quite comfortable being around me and we still chat periodically and generally have a great time.  Lately, though, I have been competing for attention with the iphone that he has.  He mentions that it is nothing important that keeps him on the couch and speechless for over an hour when he comes to visit.  He says that he's just reading up on interesting topics when he sits in the car for hours on end waiting for me to come home.  He sits here now while I do my blog, on the phone reading.

How do you confront this?  How do you deal with the missed questions, the glazed look in his eye, the "I know you'll be there when I finish reading whatever the heck I'm reading on my phone" attitude?  He's not texting so it's not a person I'm competing with.  He will, at rare times, squeal about some random fact that he found out about financial upgrades or whoever took over some soccer club in Europe or Brazil.  I've done my best circus performance but I'm not as young as I used to be and I'm quite used to being ignored so I tend to just stop trying and go do something that was on my list for the day.

Today, though, it occurred to me that this may be how you lose someone and perhaps I should try harder instead of resorting to my "Winter Boyfriend" ways...lol!  So, I ask, if there is any solution at all, I should try to learn it and apply it.  He sits in silence next to me, staring at the every interesting iphone, and I think he mentioned something about Johnny Depp so I can only assume it's about a movie.  I'm tempted to go shave my legs.  But instead, I believe I'll try once more.