On Feeling Oh-So-Old at 24
I turn 24 tomorrow. Actually, in about one hour.
(That’s not a “don’t you want to wish me Happy Birthday?” plea. I mean, you know, don’t you? But seriously, it’s just something I need to establish for the premise of this post).
I spoke with my mother tonight. She told me that 25 years ago – when she, too, was 24 – she thought she might be pregnant. It turned out to be a false alarm…or, rather, a false hope. As it turns out, my mother was hoping to be pregnant. (Three months later, approximately nine months before I was born, she would be).
Hoping to be pregnant. Trying. It’s a stage of life I still can’t even begin to imagine – and yet at 24, she was the last of her friends not to have a child. She’d been married for almost five years, out of college for three, settled into a permanent job, with a car (station wagon!) and a home (a fine trailer located on prime trailer park real estate in Allegany, NY – yes, I can proudly reclaim the name “trailer trash” as my own….). She was ready.
I’m pretty sure that if any of my friends were to have a child in the near future, I would be a little embarrassed for them. Supportive? Sure. Ready to play the doting aunt? Of course. But still – I’m sure the thought would cross my mind….how did you let that happen? I can’t imagine a situation where congratulations would be the first thing I would think to say.
It was hard enough for me when I realized, as I turned 20, that when my mother hit that milestone, she was engaged to be married within a few months. At age 20, I hadn’t yet found someone I could stay with for longer than six months (oops….four years later, still haven’t crossed that one), let alone someone I would want to stay with for the rest of my life. But if I thought it was scary, at 20, to envision myself tied down to another adult for all eternity, I had no idea how terrifying it would be to think of myself at 24, ready to be given the life-long responsibility of taking care of another human, a child, who could not care for themselves. To truly be responsible for not just my life, but his or hers as well.
At 24, I’m feeling ancient. Tied down by credit card debt and health insurance, vacation days and a lease. Ready for bed by 11pm. Disarmingly, disquietingly stable.
Yet look how young I am! I move from city to city, apartment to apartment, job to job, even country to country, all with (relative) ease. I go out, I flirt, I date as I feel like – frequently or infrequently, many at once, one at a time, or none at all. Whatever I want. My life, my time, my schedule…as much as I may consider myself constrained by the limitations a steady job and the rest of reality imposes, I really am very free to come and go as I feel. My life is mine and mine alone.
My mother – and many women of her generation – experienced none of this. Nor did she seem to want to. I know, at least, that she doesn’t regret any of the choices she made. What is it about me, about my generation, that we have decided, on the whole, that we do want all this? That marriage and a child before the age of thirty (at a bare minimum) is a state of affairs to be confused by…if not embarrassed by. That while we may dramatically bemoan our antiquity at 24, we really have chosen the youngest path we can find…and we know it?
And more importantly….is this a good thing, or a bad thing? When we reach my mother’s age, will we be able to say that we don’t regret any of the choices we made? That these years of extended youth were worth it, were the way life should be lived?
(That’s not a “don’t you want to wish me Happy Birthday?” plea. I mean, you know, don’t you? But seriously, it’s just something I need to establish for the premise of this post).
I spoke with my mother tonight. She told me that 25 years ago – when she, too, was 24 – she thought she might be pregnant. It turned out to be a false alarm…or, rather, a false hope. As it turns out, my mother was hoping to be pregnant. (Three months later, approximately nine months before I was born, she would be).
Hoping to be pregnant. Trying. It’s a stage of life I still can’t even begin to imagine – and yet at 24, she was the last of her friends not to have a child. She’d been married for almost five years, out of college for three, settled into a permanent job, with a car (station wagon!) and a home (a fine trailer located on prime trailer park real estate in Allegany, NY – yes, I can proudly reclaim the name “trailer trash” as my own….). She was ready.
I’m pretty sure that if any of my friends were to have a child in the near future, I would be a little embarrassed for them. Supportive? Sure. Ready to play the doting aunt? Of course. But still – I’m sure the thought would cross my mind….how did you let that happen? I can’t imagine a situation where congratulations would be the first thing I would think to say.
It was hard enough for me when I realized, as I turned 20, that when my mother hit that milestone, she was engaged to be married within a few months. At age 20, I hadn’t yet found someone I could stay with for longer than six months (oops….four years later, still haven’t crossed that one), let alone someone I would want to stay with for the rest of my life. But if I thought it was scary, at 20, to envision myself tied down to another adult for all eternity, I had no idea how terrifying it would be to think of myself at 24, ready to be given the life-long responsibility of taking care of another human, a child, who could not care for themselves. To truly be responsible for not just my life, but his or hers as well.
At 24, I’m feeling ancient. Tied down by credit card debt and health insurance, vacation days and a lease. Ready for bed by 11pm. Disarmingly, disquietingly stable.
Yet look how young I am! I move from city to city, apartment to apartment, job to job, even country to country, all with (relative) ease. I go out, I flirt, I date as I feel like – frequently or infrequently, many at once, one at a time, or none at all. Whatever I want. My life, my time, my schedule…as much as I may consider myself constrained by the limitations a steady job and the rest of reality imposes, I really am very free to come and go as I feel. My life is mine and mine alone.
My mother – and many women of her generation – experienced none of this. Nor did she seem to want to. I know, at least, that she doesn’t regret any of the choices she made. What is it about me, about my generation, that we have decided, on the whole, that we do want all this? That marriage and a child before the age of thirty (at a bare minimum) is a state of affairs to be confused by…if not embarrassed by. That while we may dramatically bemoan our antiquity at 24, we really have chosen the youngest path we can find…and we know it?
And more importantly….is this a good thing, or a bad thing? When we reach my mother’s age, will we be able to say that we don’t regret any of the choices we made? That these years of extended youth were worth it, were the way life should be lived?
posted by Melissa at 11:38 PM
1 Comments:
I hear you, sister! When my mom was my age, she already had me and had been married for three years! When you start hitting these milestones, you realize how radically different your identity can be from your parents', and how we live in a generation of "keeping our options open." Happy belated birthday, by the way--what a jerk I am!!
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