And I keep thinking I'm 30. I was born in 1980. When I find out someone is born in 1970, the math in my head says, "Okay, they're 40." Because, I'm 30. Even though I know I turned 30 (my Doble Quinceanera) with a tiny, two-month-old, baby Henry in my arms and now he's 4 1/2 and looking like he's wearing high-waters in 4T pants.
I talked about this with my mother-in-law a few months ago and she said it was 27 for her, the year she stopped counting, the year she still sees in the mirror.
I saw Ethan Hawke at the Oscars (and all over really, speaking of random comebacks). He looks so old! Not in a bad way, just in an aged way. When I was in high school, I had a weird love of Reality Bites. I watched it several times, had the soundtrack (on a tape), and loved the actors in it. I sketched Winona Ryder from the poster, read Ethan Hawke's novel, and wondered if I could pull off Janeane Garofalo bangs. Still, when I hear answering machines I think, "Welcome to the winter of our discontent" and when asked for my social security number, I think of the characters singing theirs off and saying it's the only thing they learned in college. So, to sum up, Ethan Hawke aging reminds me I am aging.
And I don't actually mind. I'm not opposed to the aging, I just forget it's happening. I don't even think 34 is old. But I think I have flipped to the side of age where young people see me as old. Sure, when I see pictures of myself from college (hell, from any time before having kids!) I look younger, skinnier, smilier. It's like looking at 2008 Obama and 2015 Obama. Or other people who've been in the spotlight for their change in appearance. Uma Thurman. Rene Zellweger. People are getting older and this makes headlines. As if we couldn't have seen that coming.
But every day, I look pretty much the same. It's hard to tell whether the circles under my eyes get darker. My pants fit different, but that's brownies not years. I see more gray in my hair, but I also don't dye it anymore. Maybe those have been there for awhile. (I'm hoping a Cruella DeVille stripe grows in)
What would happen if I just didn't look in the mirror for five years? It might not be that hard. Motherhood would help. I'm almost never in pictures, hanging out behind the camera. In the mornings, if the mirror isn't fogged up, I'm usually doing seven other things. Walking around with my toothbrush while I make sure Sullivan isn't chucking toys into the toilet, picking out clothes for Henry, trying to get lotion on the boys' legs to fight the winter air, kicking laundry into piles, handing Sullivan whatever item he's barking about, thinking about if I brought Henry's lunch bag inside and if we have anything other than Pirate's Booty and gummies to put in it, trying to picture the day's work calendar to see how fancy my outfit needs to be... Who needs a mirror for any of that?
And in five years (okay, a week), I'll catch a glimpse and think, "Who's that?" in the same sentence of telling someone I'm 30.
