Timing a Midlife Crisis

It is going to be a busy spring and summer, and with my 46^th birthday fast approaching in May, I wondered if it weren’t time to pencil-in my midlife crisis.

I have heard so much about them bantered about in cocktail conversation, but they usually involved men and hot red Corvettes that are barely street legal and the occasional mistake of female arm candy. What do women do?

I believe I am hitting enough life milestones this year to qualify to HAVE a midlife crisis:

-  Jim and I are celebrating our 20^th wedding anniversary.

-  My parents are celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary.

-  My mom turns 70 this year.

-  My daughter will officially be a teenager on June 9^th.

-  My son is graduating from elementary school.

-  My flower girl is getting married early this summer.

-  My daughter will be a junior bridesmaid in her wedding, and my son will be a junior groomsman.

-  My nephew is entering high school in the fall.

-  Our best friends’ baby girls start kindergarten in the fall.

-  Other friends’ children are driving themselves to school and visiting college campuses.

-  My age will make me closer to 50 than 40.

None of these life events depress me by any stretch of the imagination; however, they give me serious pause that time is flying by much too quickly. Was this the female definition of a midlife crisis?

Oddly enough, when I put this list of life events to paper, it was exactly one year since I had written my last blog entry. Again, another mark in time that may have slipped by yet somehow was brought to my attention by a quirk in the universe.

I’m not sure why I stopped writing because God knows I will thankfully never be short of material (two preteens under one roof, please). All I know is the words wouldn’t flow, and my writing felt forced, trite, pedestrian. If I didn’t enjoy writing it, I was pretty sure people would not enjoy reading it.

And it certainly wasn’t for lack of encouragement – friends and family kept asking where my stories were, and I kept answering trapped in my head.

I kept great notes but they never fleshed-out to full stories that anyone could read at their leisure.

A wise friend finally pointed-out I spent my last year in my own version of a midlife crisis, doubting my ability to work and over-thinking the thoughts that normally would flow easily from my warped yet entertaining mind.

Maybe all those milestones were niggling around in my mind, leading me to somehow become tripped up on the words and thoughts that had not changed, just my way of looking at or processing them.

I remember staying up late one night talking to my mom a few months before my wedding; not a serious discussion, but laughing about the silliness of napkin colors and matchbook cover designs. But as I laughed I noticed she started to tear up. She quickly wiped away the tears and explained her emotional confusion – how could she have a daughter old enough to be getting married when her brain felt the same youthful, funny way it did when she was married? Of course time had passed and she was older, but inside she felt she had not changed.

And over the last year, as my life’s milestones began to quickly fall into place, my mind must have somehow been subconsciously fighting back the speed of the passing years.

So, my epiphany squarely in place, I realize I can scratch midlife crisis off of my list of things to do, just as I tick off life’s milestones as they pass, and remind myself to pause and enjoy each and every one of them.