Thirty

In less than a year I'll be there, officially becoming what I've always thought of as Parents' Age. Having plenty of friends in their thirties, my husband included, I know this is farcical. Many are just as adorably screwed up and unwrinkled as they were in their twenties and few have kids, which I consider a good thing. (Though those with kids, I must add, are lovely and respectable, and I'd trust them with my dogs any day.)

When I was a kid there was a TV show called Thirty-Something, and watching it led me to believe that being in your thirties meant you were Married, fought with your Husband, had Children always running around, and were Beautiful. My own thirty-something mother was sometimes married, sometimes not, always beautiful, and always fought with men, especially the boyfriends. One of these, Bobby, once hid with me in my plastic Strawberry Shortcake house that had four walls, a roof, a real door and everything. Don't ask me how his lumbering goofy ass fit inside my tiny big-girl house, but there we were, me, confused as to what we were doing there, him with his finger over his lips. "Shh. Your mom's mad at me. It's not very fun." What saddened both of us was she never came to look for him. My thirty-year-old mom was probably on the couch, legs crossed, smoking a Virginia Slim and grateful for his absence. Mom has told me since then he popped too many pills and snorted too much coke. I'd wondered what those longish pinky fingernails were all about and assumed it had something to do with being Thirty. That night he played with me and my dolls and asked me about my life, and I was grateful for his presence.

The actuality of thirty is something I can't yet comment on, but will try (at least tangentially). Brock's almost three years into them, and now that I think on it he's been crying thirty since we met. At the time I was twenty-three, he was nearly twenty-seven, though he referred to his age as "close to thirty," and mine "closer to twenty." I thought all this very unfair and reminded him constantly that I was very Mature with intense Life Experiences he couldn't even begin to imagine, and he said that's what all immature people say when they're trying to compensate. He found ways to say everything more cleverly than I ever could, one of the reasons I just had to have him.

Thirty, from what I can surmise, just brings more pressure to fulfill the requirements from late 80s TV shows like Thirty-Something. In this decade of living two things seem to be important: Settling, and Success. The twenties are a great time to fuck around and be indecisive and take on odd jobs and diddle with your writing. By the thirties you've got to find a way to plant your ass somewhere doing something with security which leads to success and the reward of sprouting out grandchildren to bestow to one's parents. From what I can tell words that begin with an S are integral to your thirties.

I'm lucky to have a mother who's more than happy to let me wait-wait-wait on the kids front. Other friends' parents are asking whether or not their daughter's eggs are getting spoiled, or if something might be "wrong down there wink wink" with the husband. If any one of my parents/in-laws were willing to move around the corner from us into their own house and be a 24/7 nanny for me, I'd get Brock to knock me up with twins tomorrow. But as it is the dogs even get bored with me when I'm in writing/reading mode. An infant's lungs are built for detesting the selfishness of mothers with goals, and I don't want to hear it, you non-existent little brat. Even if for now, I'm still just diddling around.

Last night my dream of a crying baby woke me up at the usual hour, 4:30. My eyelids were thick and heavy as silver dollars from all the crying I'd done during the day because meanie colleagues won't let me teach whatever class I want whenever I want it (have I mentioned I'm close to thirty, and very mature with intense life experiences you can't even begin to imagine?). Another weird thing about my body when I wake up lately it that I'm super-rigid, lying on my back, heels and toes together, while my arms thrust straight above my head in the universal Touchdown! symbol. Maybe I'm celebrating in my sleep, but I can't remember what and only wish mid-night wakefulness were so exultant.

The point: I woke up and felt weird and felt pissed because of a fairly recent tradition of ours--Brock and I sleep with a night light. King has a habit of curling up in a different spot around our bed every night, and Brock was sick of tripping over him on his way to the bathroom. Hence, prevention of this by using a night light. (For the record I'm fine with tripping over black King in the black dark, because he is perfect and infallible to me, and tripping over his curled body is just a reminder of how much I love him.) The problem with the night light is it's annoyingly bright, and once I'm awake I feel drawn to its eminent orb. I feel as if Brock is Moon 1 and I'm Moon 2, and the night light is our big ole sun to work our way around till morning. These are the poetic thoughts I try to comfort myself with as redress for being needlessly awake in the blackest black of night, the King of night. We're alone during the scary hours, me and my skittering thoughts.

It's the same as when I was a child, and my mom was thirty, and I'd learned through plumb intuition that people someday die. At night the shadows hid death, every furniture creak betrayed death's approach, death could be found even in the micrometers between my bed and its sheets. I tried to read the shadows, death's minions, and tell them, I'm not scared of you, but I was. Back then I didn't have a night light and didn't need one because I was a Big Girl. Being close to thirty is a different time. Now I don't talk to shadows or fear death because I'm convinced they'll never find me. With the night light that keeps me awake I'm safe from the worst of life, the end of it.