Yes, I said yes. Yes.
Don’t laugh at the oldest mom in the room ... she probably knows a few things you don’t
I pitied them when I was a child, the old moms ambling into the class parties and Christmas pageants and end-of-the-year concerts in their owlish glasses, crepe-soled shoes and polyester pantsuits. I might have danced around my bedroom at night singing along to the 1970s anthem Free to Be ... You and Me, but I knew that it was wrong to have a mother old enough to be a grandmother.
When I was in my 20s and lived in the pre-botox Manhattan of the early ’90s, the old moms simply looked their age: old. One evening I was at a pizzeria next to a couple who I assumed were enjoying a fun outing with their granddaughter, until the man gazed lovingly at the little girl and said something along the lines of: “Mommy and I sure are having a fun night with you!”
Mommy? The woman with the salt-and-pepper bob and the reading glasses on a cord around her neck was the mom? Ughh. The little girl asked if she could have dessert, and her elderly mother happily agreed. I looked over and gifted the sweet family with a phoney Midwestern grin to compensate for my inner shuddering, and I vowed never to be an old mom. Seemed awfully sad. Also, weird. So, so definitively not my jam.
I was 32 when I had my first child and 35 when I had my second. My last child was born when I was 42. She’s now 10 years old and in Grade 4. When I walked into her last class party clutching my bag of mini-marshmallows for the sundae bar, it was clear that I was not just an older mom. I was the oldest mom in the room. By, like, quite a lot.
I didn’t go to the class party to raise the median age of the moms just for sport. My daughter wanted me to go, and we were bringing home the class gecko for the break. My bad knee made an unfortunate popping sound when I bent down and peered at the lizard through its glass cage. Illuminated by the heat lamp, the skin on my hand looked a bit reptilian.
Had my older children asked if they could bring home a lizard, I might have said that caring for a lizard sounds like a really neat opportunity — for one of your classmates! Or I would have begged off, citing the family dog as the reason. But the older mom has one ace up her baggy sleeve: She says yes.
An impromptu package of powdered sugar doughnuts at the gas station? Stay up past your bedtime to finish your movie on a school night? In fact, do not even have an actual bedtime? Ride your bike before doing homework? Read comic books instead of cleaning your room? Fruit snacks instead of a snack of actual fruit? I’m your go-to gal for all the above. Whenever the answer can be yes, the answer is yes.
My husband is on board for all this. Do we care what other parents think? (Some of whom, it should be noted, are young enough to be our children.) We do not. Wisdom is touted as the big benefit of older motherhood, along with the fabled financial security — cue the laughter emoji — and I’m as eager as anyone to share whatever knowledge I’ve amassed in my 52 years. Whenever I’m on the periphery of a conversation between young moms discussing bottle feeding versus breastfeeding, or crib sleeping versus co-sleeping, I want to exclaim: These things matter not, for we are all tethered so loosely to this world! But nobody likes a pontificating sage in last year’s Danskos, and I’m no expert on parenting. It’s just me trying my best. It’s just me and my yes.
But I do know this: The old mothers who came before me didn’t deserve the pity of a child already skilled at casting a patriarchal gaze (Mother should be young — well youngish — and pretty!) or the melancholy disdain of a confident 20-something. The old mothers had already experienced a half-century or so of the brutal and heartbreaking days that any life serves up; the constant, low-level anxiety in the aftermath of hard times was like their second heartbeat.
If old mothers of yesteryear felt my youthful pity, they wouldn’t have cared a bit. They were probably a little like I am now, thinking about the logistics of taking home the class gecko or whatever kooky thing they’d said yes to.
They were probably looking across the classroom at their child laughing with her friends while balancing a marshmallow on her nose, and feeling only triumph, only joy.