The Slippery Slope to 40

Yesterday I turned 39 with little to no anxiety about aging, and a good dose of fancy tequila.

The day was glorious, sunny, and warm. Kate took a long nap and when she got up we went to Chaparral House for a quick visit. It was torture sitting in a dark TV room with about 15 women sleeping in wheelchairs in front of a videotape of some highbrow play. (Less depressing than if they’d been watching crappy sitcomes, but still.) Rose was not in her room and her door was closed. Of course, I always panic that maybe she’s gone, as in gone. She never seems to enjoy socializing with the other “inmates” but when I asked a nurse where she was, she said she was in the TV room.

We hadn’t seen Rose last week because of our road trip. She was thrilled to see Kate and even remembered her name calling her Katie, but often still referring to her as him. I think because she has twin sons, and her memory is so sporadic, she thinks of all babies as being boys.

She did ask her favorite question, “Does he look like his father?” The first hundred times she asked me that I answered honestly saying not really. But it seems to me it’s an unsatisfying answer, so recently I’ve taken to saying yes. I tell her (and it’s not really that far-fetched) that Kate has her father’s eyes. “Oh he must love her,” she says. It’s interesting that she talks about how Mark must love Kate, but we never talk about my experience as a mother.

At any rate, I busted a move out of the nursing home pretty quickly because Sacha and baby Owen were going to the UC Berkeley pool and it seemed like a far nicer way to spend my b-day afternoon. Sacha had an extra swim diaper so I was able to attempt to get Kate into the wading pool, but she would have none of the chilly water. No fool, she.

Kevin, and our neighbors Cat and Andy (friends from before having moved to Oak-Town), came over for din din. It was warm enough to eat outside, and Mark did ribs on the grill, with baked beans, cole slaw, and corn bread. Kevin made kick-ass margaritas, and we had a peach strudel/pie thingy for dessert. It was a really relaxed and fun night.

Hooray! I am 39, with cool friends, a nice little house where it’s warm enough to eat outside, a husband who I adore, and the best little baby ever born, who slept peacefully as we ate, drank, talked and laughed the evening away. Lucky 39-year-old me.