Age is Just a Number?

This year I am turning thirty five.

And I swear I am not going whine about my age, except I am thinking, what are the thirties for? For most people I know, the thirties are for having babies, and volunteering at their kids school and complaining about not having any time for themselves because their kids take up their life (but really their life will be so much busier when their kids are older like mine I swear). The thirties are about people’s careers. They finally are doing the thing they wanted to do and now they are trying to balance it with marriage and kids and a dog. The thirties are about timeshares in Tahoe, the OC, Palm Springs and weekend getaways. The thirties are about mortgages and dinner parties, except that I read in the New Yorker that the dinner party is becoming extinct. Are they?

I work with some girls who just turned thirty. They are hitting their stride career-wise. They are dating for husbands, thinking of eventual kids and look fantastic. They have such great teeth, and oh their hair! I read it’s what happens to women. Seriously, women have amazing hair in their thirties. They do spin at the gym. I have some friends who are in the mid thirties like me, and they are doing that stuff with the kids, the dinner parties, and marriages. And their hair is pretty nice too. There is variety in there, obviously not everyone is the same, but it feels all very related.

I was skyping with the French kid and my teenager for Christmas and I made a comment about being old. The French kid said, age is just a number. And I thought, let’s see what he says about age when he’s thirty five.

And I don’t mean to be down on thirty five, because thirty five isn’t bad, per say. I am healthy, despite my acne that has persisted past it’s expiration date, and despite my lack of 10k able knees. I have a career that is almost almost 9 years old, older than my friend’s kids, and I am proud of what I accomplished. I have a marriage that is turning 10, which I am also proud despite how freakin hard it is being married and raising kids with that person. But I certainly feel like there is a big difference between 24 and 34.

Today I was watching that HBO show Girls, which can be funny in moments but also is almost alien to me. It won a golden globe I think, but I don’t really watch the award shows. It’s about twenty something girls and it’s been compared to Sex and the City, but wasn’t Carrie like thirty in that show? Any how, I am not twenty something and was sometimes baffled by their behavior. And that’s when I realized I left a certain demographic. Or maybe I was never in it. The relationships those girls have are weird and sad and so casual. Everything they do is casual and ironic and so self involved. Is that the twenties? Completely self involved? I can’t help that nagging feeling that I get occasionally that I have never been in the demographic. What ever demographic it is that people are all in. I just never did things in the order everyone else did.

Even better than that HBO show is a short film they had on HBO called Picture Paris.(Okay, I watched a lot of tv today). In this show, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is obsessed with planning a trip to Paris as her last kid goes off to college. And then her husband drops a bombshell and us leaving her. But it’s quirky and funny. In my thirties I am liking subtle and quirky a little more than obvious and Dramatic. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Colbert and John Stewart. But sometimes life is disappointing, funny and great all in a subtle and quiet way.

I am typing this on an iPad. And next to me my husband is watching Downton Abbey with ear phones on his laptop. And my teenage kids are scrolling through tumblr and laughing at gifs somewhere in their bedrooms while texting. And I have no idea what the next years of my thirties will bring. And I guess that is why I am writing this. But I am going to find out and I will let you know. But I am guessing your thirties may be different.