This week, I turned fifty-eight on a nondescript Tuesday during a busy work week while the rest of my family was away. Just me and the dog, planning a night on the couch, eating leftover salad and watching reality TV.
But I didn’t mind. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed myself.
Of course, my husband Francis called to deliver his annual joke: “Honey, you might be fifty-eight, but you’re built like you’re fifty-seven.” I got a chuckle out of his clumsy humor like I always do.
I wasn’t always so nonchalant about my birthdays. In fact, ten years ago, on my 48th birthday, I had a mid-life crisis.
That morning, while making breakfast in our base house at Naval Station Newport, I had my very first hot flash. The uncanny coincidence of the occurrence made it seem psychosomatic. However, I couldn’t deny the unsettling reality of the sweat mustache that had formed while I was eating scrambled eggs. I tried to pass the event off as a fluke, but while going about my day, I started thinking, “You know, I’m getting kind of old. Really old.”
I’d always been content with the progression of my life as a Navy wife and mother of three; generally gratified to have found a calling to serve my military family, rather than pursuing my legal career.
But suddenly, life passed before my eyes as if death were imminent. I thought about my education and quickly decided I’d wasted it. I thought about my early work experiences as a young attorney before Navy life, and I summarily concluded my brain had atrophied to the size of a tangerine. I thought about my homemaking skills, swiftly determining I was a mediocre cook and reluctant cleaner at best.
After decades of gleaning my own identity from the contentment of my family members, it was suddenly all about me.
There was something about this particular birthday that had me wallowing in panicked self-loathing. Perhaps it was the hair that seemed to be clinging damply to the back of my perspiring neck. Or maybe it was the lack of bladder control. Did I detect a throbbing bunion? Was I sprouting age spots?
As the day progressed, I relentlessly berated, harangued, nit-picked, criticized, and condemned myself until I could feel my spider veins bulge.
“Why do I snap at the kids so much? Why can’t I seem to cook a decent meal without turning meat into shoe leather? Why do I watch so much TV at night? Why couldn’t I ever get rid of this paunch? Why didn’t I moisturize when I was younger? Why do I always forget to bring my coupons to the commissary? Why? Why? Why?!”
By the time Francis came home from work, I was slumped in a kitchen chair, staring into a cup of coffee gone cold.
I’d hit rock bottom.
“Happy birthday, Honey!” he offered with a grin. I looked up weakly, and said, “I think I’m having some kind of mid-life crisis … can you listen to me for a sec?” For the next twenty minutes, Francis sat calmly in his cammies at our kitchen table, permitting me to tell him all about the hot flash and the resulting epiphany revealing the harsh truth: I’d never really amounted to much and it was too late to do anything about it.
At the risk of sounding sexist, I find that men have a unique ability to simplify complex emotional situations that women tend to over-complicate. Or maybe they just don’t get it. Either way, it can be helpful.
Francis waited until the end of my rant, then simply got up and poured us each a glass of wine. I wondered whether he’d heard anything I’d just said. Then, holding his glass up to toast mine, he delivered the birthday joke that would not only snap me out of my self-centered spiral, it would also become his annual tradition: “Honey, you might’ve turned forty-eight today, but you’re built like you’re forty-seven!”
I couldn’t help but laugh, and in that instant, my hot flash turned into a flash flood of gratitude for our military life, the simplicity of love, and the boundless support of my family.
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