Ma’am I am

By Alison Lebovitz

So I was walking into a convenience store the other day, and this cute young guy was walking out, and he paused so he could hold the door for me. And of course I thought, “Wow, a cute young guy is holding the door for me,” so when I reached the door, I smiled at the cute young guy and said, “Well, thank you so much,” and then he smiled back at me and said, “Yes ma’am.”

And that’s when the dagger from that cute young guy went straight into my big old heart.

The question is, when did I get to be this age? And by that I mean a double-digit, approaching 40, gray-hair-pulling, mini-van-driving, vitamin-taking, age-defying-cream-wearing wife and mother of three they now call “Ma’am.” I am in no way suggesting I am unhappy about this, because I love my husband, adore my kids and really dig my minivan. (I could do without the gray hairs, of course.) I just wonder: If 60 is the new 50, and 50 is the new 40, and 40 is the new 30, then when am I supposed to schedule my mid-life crisis?

My parents always told me that one day I would be an adult, responsible for my actions and able to make my own decisions in life. I just thought they were talking about my Bat Mitzvah. I had no idea I would actually be their age one day.

The “Ma’am Incident” (as it is now referred to in broader circles) was just the tip of the I-seem-to-be-getting-older iceberg. The other day, my oldest son asked, “Mom, what was your favorite website when you were my age?” To which I responded, “I didn’t have one—the Internet didn’t exist.” That prompted a huge gasp, followed by a 20-minute discussion on my age, during which I assured him that I was born way after the dinosaurs and just before Al Gore discovered cyberspace.

A few weeks ago, I was at a party, again talking to a young, hip crowd that I had deluded myself into thinking I was part of, and I made a reference to The Love Boat. One of the people just stared at me with a puzzled look, while another laughed and nodded his head. I begged, “You do know what The Love Boat is, don’t you?” To which the nodder replied, “Oh, sure, I used to watch that show all the time.” I gave a premature sigh of relief, right before he added, “It used to come on Nick at Nite!”

TV shows are not my only age gauge these days. Musical tastes, movie quotes, pop culture references, and other common knowledge assumptions immediately place me in the “yeah, I think my mom likes that” category in many a social circle.

I was in a meeting at one of the downtown museums recently along with my friend, Alexis (who happens to really be my age, or at least that’s my story and I am sticking to it), and our group started talking about the local young professional group—specifically, ways to attract them to the organization and tactics that might appeal to their generation. After several minutes of deliberation, Alexis appeared obviously befuddled by the discussion. When we paused to question her confusion, she said, “Sorry, I just thought I was part of this young professional group. When did that change?”

It hits all of us at different times and stages in our lives: the reality that we are not as young as we used to be or older than we like to admit. Some say age is just a number, a state of mind, really. But society says differently. All those beauty magazines and product commercials are constantly encouraging us to be an age that we are not. They push the tweeners to be more like teenagers, and the teenagers to look more like young adults, and the young adults to act more like mature adults—and then turn around and tell the mature adults that we need Botox and lipo and facial peels to look young again. Whatever happened to enjoying and embracing the age that we are?

Abraham Lincoln once said, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” If you ask me, Lincoln was a pretty smart guy. And if you ask my kids, Abraham Lincoln was just a guy who happened to be president a long, long time ago—when Mommy was a little girl.