I had never been particularly afraid of aging, or at least this is what I’ve told myself. I’ve told myself this even as my hair stylist combed a lovely shade of chocolate into my hair, or even when I stopped getting carded a year ago. Or when I started knitting scarves and sweaters and doing yoga. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I thought the specter of Middle Age (dum-duh-dum-dum!) was on the horizon, not staring me down in my front yard. So when Saturday came, and Giselle woke up next to me, kissed my head and said, “Happy Birthday!” I did a double take.

(filling out the paper work)

Thirty-five. It doesn’t seem much different from thirty-four except that it’s midway through my thirties. And that I’m now in a different demographic, not that fun “18-34” market. And that the Things Three routinely mention musicians, actors, shows, and even lingo, that I have never heard in my life. And that I probably should start getting mammograms now. And I should maybe consider getting my tubes tied. And, holy Christ, my eggs are past their “best by” date, and if I wanted to ever get pregnant again (I cross myself as I say this to ward off the fertility, lest I end up knocked up by some deity with a morbid sense of humor), I would likely have to resort to numerous tests and treatments.

So, yeah, except for those things, it’s entirely the same.

And of course, I feel no pressure to achieve anything substantive within the next five years. None at all. Nevermind that I don’t have a book done yet, I’m not a tenured-track professor, or even a tenured-track janitor. Thirty-five. I still want to see South America, still want to drive across the country and back with the kids on some epic road trip. I want to learn Spanish. I want to fall in love again. Thirty-five. I’ve got time, right?


(my little handbag on the counter)

This explains, in part, why I decided with certainty on Saturday morning to get my nose pierced. I had made plans to do the deed during the week, and had conscripted both Mike and New Slang Philosopher to go along—Mike for moral support* and New Slang Philosopher to take photos with her fancy digital camera**. But Saturday, I knew I had to go through with it, knew I had to mark myself somehow.

(Mike helping me pick out jewelry)

In retrospect, this isn’t a new coping mechanism for me. I got my first—and only--tattoo when Ivan was 8 months old. At the time, I was a secretary for a major auto insurance company. I worked in claims with people who knew me as kind and considerate and thoughtful, and funny, sure, but as a mother. People said I was a “natural” at motherhood, that I was sweet and good. Part of me hated the confinement such a narrow definition brought. We lived in Bakersfield, California at the time, as conservative a place as you can find in California, and I felt conflicted all the time, worried about the world and my place in it. My employer required all female employees to wear nylons with skirts, and had strict rules about hemlines. But none, I noted, about tattoos. That spring, when we drove to Portland, Oregon for a vacation, I decided I needed to do something, needed to scar my body in some way, make people see me in some new light. The tattoo took 90 minutes to be etched into the smooth skin above my ankle. It bled through the bandages and my sock, and stung like a fresh burn for a week, but it was worth it every time someone glanced at it twice.

Years later, a few months after John moved out and I had started divorce proceedings, I decided to get a small piercing in my ear. Small, and delicate and very feminine and only a little painful. At the time, I thought I had just wanted something a little bit beyond the typical pierced ears, and there’s truth to that. But perhaps I wanted something more, some mark to stand out.


(my piercing guy was a total ham)

By this time, when I officially  hit thirty-five, I realized why I wanted to pierce my nose. I sometimes wish that the past had marked me somehow, had made the work and struggles more obvious to the casual observer. I say this as someone who fell in love not once, but twice, with a physically disabled man. I say this as someone who loved each of their scars, the long river of tissue along one’s arm, the tiny pools left by the halo at the temples of another. My love and affection blended with their physical selves, their particulars, and I came to believe that their personalities could not be separated from the scars, a kind of topography of their darker, and richer, lives. A topography I can’t easily replicate, nor would want to.

(the proverbial money shot)

So, like everything in the symbolic world, what I chose was an abstraction of this, something pretty and cute, and altogether responsible for holding my fears of aging away. At least for the time being.


(basking in the afterglow)

*tm

*And by “moral support” I mean “looking extremely nauseated and uneasy, which makes me feel better about anything I may do or feel because it will not be nearly as wussy.”

**New Slang Philosopher took all the photos in this blog entry.