Here it is, the eve of my 67th birthday. I am anxiously awaiting the impending snow storm and an Eagles’ victory, though I have to admit, I was conflicted for no other reason than… Taylor Swift. Yes, she still looms large in my life. So large that I’ve thought this all through. Last week she didn’t go home with the coveted Grammy, which means if Travis doesn’t go home with the coveted Lombardi it would, shall we say ,even the playing field.
So Fly, Eagles Fly!
As I sit here reflecting on the life I’ve lived, those Grateful Dead lyrics keep running through my head:
Woah, oh, what I want to know
Where does the time go?
We’re having our 50th high school reunion this fall. That's 50. Five-Oh. The reunion 17 year-old me thought she’d never live to see. Not the way she was running through her life.
And what a run it’s been.
Those of you who have run with me, know that getting this far has been nothing more than a stroke of good luck.
My mother is 99 years old and still living on her own, so I’m fairly certain that genetics coupled with advances in health care will keep me around to 100. If it works out like I’m thinking it will, it means I have 33 more years to go. It seems like a lifetime and I guess technically it is. But we all know, a lifetime goes by in a flash.
The daughter was born two weeks after my 34th birthday, 33 years ago. Then 31 years ago came the middle one followed by the youngest two years after that. It was very important to me to have them spaced evenly.
I remember it all too well.
After the daughter was born, CNBC allowed me to work two days a week from home. This was a cutting-edge concept, long before it was the norm, let alone expedient. I had to fax ad copy in to my boss, as something as basic as email was just emerging. I had to attend creative meetings on the phone without the benefit of a button to mute my toddlers’ tantrums, though luckily there was not yet such a thing as Skype or Zoom or FaceTime. I hedged my bets, sneaking out to the zoo or the grocery store or the Children’s Museum, hoping there wouldn’t be an emergency press kit to write for E Jean Carroll. I’d say, “Working on it,” when they’d call to ask how the Consumer Ticker Guide was coming (my professional claim to fame – I wrote an entire brochure on how to read the ticker guide and to this day still have no idea what I was talking about). Once the kids went to bed, I’d spend hours banging out clever word combinations on my electric typewriter and subsequently on my Dell PC to the tune of the dial-up modem.
My insides were constantly shaking.
Shortly after all three were in school for six blissful hours a day, CNBC dissolved the creative services department and we were all laid off. Except for a few short-term gigs, I never worked in an office again. I tried to make a living as a freelancer. Tried being the operative word. Then to assuage that guilt, and to make it look like I was doing something productive, I took on the town. Alongside my best friend Claire, from whom I learned how to multi-task motherhood, we became PTA presidents, Little League board members, and the ultimate soccer, baseball, wrestling, swimming, cheerleading, basketball and football moms. I had meetings several nights a week and a spouse who worked long and grueling hours so my meager freelance earnings went toward covering the cost of babysitters. Toward covering. Not covering.
In the midst of it all, I had a slew of medical blips – a hip replacement, a hysterectomy, double mastectomy, emergency gall bladder surgery, a three-week stint in the hospital with pancreatitis, and two knee replacements at once. And though we joked that I’d do anything to get a break, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
The years kept flying and our toddlers became tweens then teens which meant a house full of random kids who were doing “nothing” in our basement. But somehow we all survived and none of us were arrested on my watch.
We spent thousands of hours, dollars, and unhealthy amounts of emotional energy perched on the bleachers, dreaming of college scholarships and how to manage the inevitable multi-million dollar professional sports contracts.
The kids went off to far-flung colleges and chose majors that would have surprised our younger selves: Peace, War, and Defense; Economics/Marketing; and Philosophy. One now lives in Brooklyn, one in Los Angeles, and one in Gdansk. Though on any given day it might be Afula, Tbilisi, Athens, Nassau, or Cusco.
And in a blink of an eye 33 years went by.
It was a different kind of living than the first 33, but there was a lot crammed in there. I feel like I can finally catch my breath. But I also know that I can’t rest for too long because though the back end won’t have the same tour de force, I still have a lifetime to go.
So when I start to stagnate preferring to watch The Diplomat over meeting for cocktails, when I balk at flying across the country for a girls’ trip, when I say I can’t play pickleball more than four days a week, when I say I’m too old to go or do or be….
Just dangle those Eagles or Taylor Swift tickets, and I’ll be there. This year, next year, or 33 years down the road.
