29 by Adena Halpern

Author:Adena Halpern [Halpern, Adena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780731814930
Google: RKOrctKoeHoC
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

the point of no return

A moment comes in everyone’s life when they realize they’re old. I’m not talking about the day you see your first gray hair or the day you see the hint of a crow’s foot. What I’m talking about is the day when you realize you’ve grown out of being able to adapt to something new.

It’s the kind of thing that creeps up on you. Take music, for example. One day you’re listening to the latest tune that comes on the radio, and then the next day you can’t relate. It’s too loud. You can’t keep the beat. You say to the person next to you, “That’s singing?” So you start listening to music that you know, and you stop listening to the new stuff. Pretty soon your kids are talking about bands you’ve never heard of, bands you never knew existed. You should have seen the look on Lucy’s face when I told her I’d seen that Bono on television and that I never heard of the band U2.

“That’s old-school,” she said.

“It’s what?” I asked her.

“It’s not a new band.”

And it’s not just music I’m talking about. That’s just an example. Look at these phrases the kids are saying today. I never even heard of this phrase old-school until Lucy said it. Where does that derive from? Does it mean that it’s something dating back to when the person went to school, or is the word school abstract, as in the particular school of thought? I don’t know—you tell me. This is just what I’m saying, though. Do you see where I’m going with this?

One day you realize that you’ve had the same hairstyle for the past fifteen years. It’s not something you’ve thought about. It’s just what looks good on you, so you keep getting it cut that way rather than trying something new. I almost had a heart attack when Lancôme stopped making my favorite lipstick. I was on the phone with Lancôme for three hours, with four different operators, trying to get to the bottom of why they discontinued my color, when the last person finally said, “No one wears that color anymore, ma’am.”

“I do!” I said.

That wasn’t even the thing that made me realize I was officially old. The thing with the lipstick happened long after the revelation, but it’s just another example.

Milestones in your child’s life should also make you feel older but, truthfully, that didn’t happen to me. I was always the youngest mother in Barbara’s school. I was always the prettiest one, too, but that was my own observation. Whenever I went to any of Howard’s class reunions, I was always the youngest bride. Of course the last year we went, for his fortieth reunion, Howard’s old friend Jerry Young (no pun intended) brought his new girlfriend, who could have been his daughter’s daughter. She didn’t make me feel old, though, she just looked ridiculous being with such an old man.

The latest music and the latest catchphrases didn’t bother me, either.

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