Sometimes I think getting older gracefully simply means not bridling too much against the fact that most of us, at
midlife, find ourselves drifting inexorably into cliché.
I mentioned this, my latest theory on this bizarro transition I and my agemates are undergoing, to a dad at my kids' school, as he gave me a lift back home in his brand new...do I even have to say it? Minivan! He laughed his agreement, an then pointed out, "But you know, I have to say, as minivans go, this one is really sporty." My cliché-o-meter was way over to the right on that one. Slap on a "Proud Parent of an Honor Student" bumper sticker, and he could pull into his reserved parking spot outside the Cliché Hall of Fame.
Not that I'm putting him or any of us down, by the way-then I'd be the clichéd pot calling the clichéd kettle black. This very morning, I heard no fewer than three mom clichés come flying out of my mouth (the most egregious of which was, "Goody for Olivia that she got a blue streak in her hair. I'm not Olivia's mother. I'm your mother.") Then I went into the bathroom to get ready and briefly stretched the skin of my face back to see what I'd look like with a facelift (better, in case you were wondering) before flossing rigorously because I've become the cliché of the woman who didn't floss all these years and am now at risk for gum disease. I think the only cliché I didn't engage in this morning was asking my husband if my butt looked OK in the jeans I was wearing. Then I'd have forced him to supply the clichéd answer ("Your butt always looks good to me, honey") and that just didn't seem fair.
Clichés are clichés, of course, because they are repeated with such frequency so as to become trite or hackneyed. Some of the mondo midlife how-did-I-get-to-be-that-person? clichés include the guy who wears Dockers all day but rocks out in the Sabbath cover band with his buddies at the local suburban pizza joint on the third Thursday of each month; the woman who gets way more emotional gratification from her relationship with her personal trainer than is strictly kosher; and of course the heroic attempts to resist becoming a cliché which are in themselves clichéd, like the parents who try a bit too hard to participate in their teenager's pop cultural universe. That usually results in statements like, "I didn't realize the Dutchess of York had embarked on a music career! Word up!"
As with everything about aging out of young, which I write about on my blog formerlyhot.com, and in my book, My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches from Just the Other Side of Young, I have to laugh at myself, because really, what's the alternative? Of course, people my age (I'm 43) do not have a market lock on clichés, either. It's just when you're 23 and living the cliché of, say, arguing radical politics with your fellow travelers at the Starbucks or having an affair with your very married boss and actually believing in your case that he's going to leave his wife for you, you think you're the only person ever to do what you're doing. You invented it, because you're young and whoever would tell you that you didn't invent it is old and hence irrelevant.
The truth is, there's no harm in thinking that way. It keeps life raw and intense and fresh, even as you do what legions before you have done. So that's what I'm going to try and do today, and see how it goes. Excuse me while I go meet my personal trainer. Today we're working on my core.
Photo by gruntzooki CC
