WATFORD CITY, N.D. — By the time you read this, I will have just turned 39.
Here I am, perched on top of the hill, wobbly and teetering, looking forward to the day when I take a step.
The hill. That’s how they define it.
I’m at the age where the high school marching band is playing the music I listened to as a teenager. I’m at the age where I couldn’t name one relevant pop star in a lineup. I’m at the age where I spend an excessive amount of my paycheck on multivitamins, probiotics and physical therapy appointments and I genuinely get excited about a vacuum cleaner.
I’m at the age where I’ve started telling my kids they don’t know how good they have it. I say things like, “When I was a kid, we didn’t have all these choices! As a child, I only had one pair of tennis shoes. When I was a kid, we listened to the AM radio station and looked out the window on road trips,” which prompts one of my favorite questions, “Were there even cars when you were a kid?”
Ugh. I can still recall asking my dad the exact same thing. I pictured him driving around as a kid in a covered wagon and I didn’t understand why he laughed so hard at the question.
I was 5 years old and he was 37 in the olden days.
So I am there, too. I was born in the past, before smartphones and high-speed Internet. To talk to my boyfriend, I had first to call his home and speak to his father. This is the horror. When we took a picture, we had to wait at least an hour to see the result, and that’s only if you lived in a big town with a Walmart or something.
My generation is the only one that grew up with high-tech technology. In high school, we were the first to have cellphones. We were also in college at the time that Facebook was created. We remember traveler’s checks and the movie theaters only taking cash. We wondered what it meant to pay per text message, and how it could be possible. And we remember TGIF television where we had to — gasp! — be in front of the TV on time and watch the commercials.
Although I may be wrong, almost-40-year olds are the last human beings to actually pick up a phone and ask a question, have an actual conversation, or plan a weekend.
We’re vintage like that.
Vintage items are like the childhood relics we found at a museum or thrift shop. An orange Tupperware juice mug that was kept in every household’s fridge, containing green Kool-Aid. The TV Guide collection. The BUM sweatshirt. The McDonald’s Happy Meal Smurf Set. My Little Ponies and GI Joe Figurines. We moved in with a couple of friends into our first apartments, which cost $400 per monthly.
Those were those days.
While rubbing my neck, I also say it now, despite the fact that I have a lot of ergonomic pillows.
When my family asked me how I wanted to spend my birthday, I didn’t say a long nap, but I wanted to. Instead, I stated that I wanted to be home with my children and ride horses. Let me sit for a little longer in the morning with my cup of coffee — and I meant it. That’s all I wanted, to take it easy because I’ve been busting my butt the last decade or two.
39. If I’m lucky, that’s almost half my life behind me, but whew, that last part went fast, didn’t it? How long does it take to start feeling like you’re getting things right? My 30s were the years that I firmly believed in my motivations and established a career path that was not easily defined by me as a 20-something. My 30s saw me through motherhood, and then they slapped me with the reality of my mortality. It cut me open, literally, right down the middle and is still working on teaching me that healing takes patience, that I can’t do a thing if I don’t take care of myself properly.
In my 20s, it was all I ever thought possible.
My 30s helped me discover that I don’t want to.
And while our society tries to tell women like me that we’re losing relevance (remember the pop star thing?), I’m happy to now have the audacity to call bull on that. I’ve been working my whole life to get to the very place I stand, and I got most of the way by navigating with an actual map.
So cheers to middle age, a place from which we can tell you from experience that you’re going to regret those jeans in a few years, but you most definitely should wear them anyway.
