By Wendy Paris
This year, I’m wintering in South Florida with my husband because my mother has offered to babysit for our newborn. I just had my first baby in November, at age 41. This felt old to be a new mother, old in general back home in New York with its fresh crop of caffeine-fueled recent grads descending on the city each semester, eager to work longer and harder than I care to as a new mom. I was fighting my forties in New York. But after one month in Palm Beach Country, I’m ready to be 70. I came to Florida to help ease the transition into working motherhood, but what I really want to do, I now realize, is retire.
Earlier this week, I was lunching at Flakowitz deli in Boynton Beach, listening to two white-haired ladies at the next table. “I’d like to see that movie Juno tonight,” the taller woman said. “Are you busy tonight?”
“I am busy tonight,” her shorter, sweeter-voiced friend said.
She didn’t say what she was busy doing, but I bet it wasn’t breastfeeding. Just that morning, I’d seen a dozen intriguing lectures, photography exhibits and outdoor concerts listed in the “Senior Pages” of the Palm Beach Post. I’m not saying breastfeeding isn’t an enriching activity itself. I know it’s supposed to be good for the baby and a great bonding experience for us. And it’s boosted my bust line three sizes, a parenting boon I hadn’t expected. I’m sure this is the wrong message to glean from the joys of new motherhood, but it’s making me want a boob job.
Still, when I reach my seventies, (and have gotten Alexander safely past nursing and through graduate school) I, too, will have oceans of free time to spend in recreational learning.
At Flakowitz, the larger woman took a sip of her matzo ball soup, a hearty, authentic version that those of us still struggling in the city like to claim you can find nowhere else. “I hear it’s good. Did you see Sweeney Todd?”
“I thought it would be too violent for me. I did read The Kite Runner.”
“I hear that’s a great book, but I haven’t gotten through it.”
I haven’t gotten through The Kite Runner either. I’ve been too busy trying to succeed it in the Cultural Industrial Complex up north to enjoy any culture myself. And now, with baby Alexander on board, I’m trying to squeeze my freelance writing career around diapering, feeding and wiping up drool. Meanwhile, ladies like these lounge around at the beach, then dress in jumpsuits with elastic waistbands to attend outdoor concerts under the palms.
I had a sudden image of what I want from life. I want to be 70. I want a fluffy white dog and a circle of lady friends with time on their hands. I’ll have accomplished (or finally abandoned) my career ambitions. I’lll never wear any fabric heavier than cotton. I’ll drive my brand-new silver Thunderbird, with three- or four-thousand miles on the odometer, over the six-lane surface streets to readings and concerts and films. At night, the bright overhead streetlights make these routes navigable, even with compromised eyesight. Alexander will fly down to visit me, and pick up the tab at the early bird specials I’ll love.
I picked up my cell phone and called my best friend, Thea, at her home in Los Angeles. Thea is also a new mother, at 42. Late new motherhood is definitely an experience to share with a best friend. But in our 40′s, other issues take precedence, like our careers, our husband’s careers, our entrenched social and professional networks.
But by 70, we’ll be past all that. “Listen to this!” I say when she answers the phone. “There’s a discussion of the 150-year evolution of the Tivoli Gardens today at Cafe Boulud in the Brazilian Court in Palm Beach. Tina Brown is heading down to talk about her new book. And I want to hear live music on Clematis Street in West Palm. Let’s make sure to live in the same city when we’re old so we can go to events like this!”
There’s a pause on her end. “Um. Okay,” she says.
“You don’t sound as excited about sharing our old age as I am.”
“Well, I’m kind of busy being 42 right now. I haven’t really given much thought to being 70.”
“You haven’t?” Of course she hasn’t. She lives in LA, surrounded by other new mothers hot in the middle of their lives. But out here in Palm Beach, I can see the future, and I’m ready for it now.
There’s a tendency down here for young people - anyone under 55, say – to make unflattering generalizations about their elderly neighbors. “They move too slowly.” “They make left turns from the right-hand turn lane.” Or, “They’re too short to see over the steering wheel.”
To these unfair accusations, I say, “So what?” I, too, intend to stay on the road long after my license should have been revoked, to idle at intersections doing Sudoku puzzles while impatient whippersnappers pass by on both sides. I’ll cut my hair short and dye it the color of sugar, or sand or Snapple Diet Peach. These will be my golden years, and I’ll drive and dress how I please.
This, of course, is the fantasy of the post-parenting, post-striving years: There will finally be time to become the person you were meant to be. It will be like living in Europe, but with more sun and better plumbing, enough time for culture and conversation, for beating your best game.
At Flakowitz, the taller woman puts a hand over her mouth to cover a yawn. Her enthusiasm for the movies has waned. Her friend can’t go, and she may not have a husband still alive for social backup, I realize. “I usually nap at this hour,” she says.
“Me too,” her friend admits.
“Maybe I’ll just stay in tonight and open up two days of mail I haven’t had a chance to get to. Then turn in early.”
“That sounds good,” her friend says. “Though I do have plans.”
Suddenly I’m worried. Will I have the energy to embrace all that old age has to offer? Does advanced maturity force the habitually frenetic to schedule better, make the perpetually striving more content? Sure, I’m weathering career anxiety mixed with new-baby fatigue, but when I reach my 70s, will I be able to stay awake for every concert?
Maybe the golden years are really a decade from now, when Alexander is too old for diapers but too young to have a really compelling social life of his own. I’ll bring him with me to the lectures and art museums and paint-your-own-pottery places I want to attend. I’ll be a mother and a cultural maven. My career will have finally taken off. Yes, those are the easy, breezy days before me, in about 10 years from now. Then, I’m sure, I’ll finally be content.
Wendy Paris is a writer and new mother in New York. She’s the author of The Fairy Tale Formula for Lasting Love (HarperCollins) and has written for The New York Times, Salon.com, Portfolo.com, Plum, The Guardian and other publications.
Reading for pleasure is one of those activities I associate with my life before children: those lazy Sunday mornings curled up with a page-turner (and the Sunday Times) in my jammies was a delicious weekly habit. I still love to read under the covers at bedtime and by Wednesday, I’ve gotten through most of the Sunday paper. But these days, by the time I’ve gotten the kids to bed, cleaned up the mess and had a bite, I can barely get through a few pages before nodding off. 
