amenopausalmom.com

Date nights have changed over the years, haven’t they married/single/divorced mothers?

Face it: Gone are the gropings in the back of the car. The steamy windows. The underpanties draped over the rear view mirror. The only time any of this happens is when I’m trying to change my daughters’ clothes after a long day at the beach, and I’m generally screaming at the top of the lungs in an angry voice while doing this.

No, date nights have changed now that we have two young kids.

Dinner out doesn’t happen, unless the two are in tow. When we do go out, we chug our wine so that the girls don’t accidentally spill it as they grab bread and salad and other food from the table as soon as the waitress sets it down. (You’d think they never eat, but my grocery bill can prove otherwise!)

The movies? Please! The last time my husband and I saw a movie alone was right before the birth of the second daughter. That night lasted five hours (movie AND dinner!). We had to rush home to not surpass that fifth hour since the babysitter cost $12 per hour and we were already well over $100 for the dinner, movie and sitter that night.

Last night my husband and i had date night. It went something like this:

1. Cheap but good bottle of Cabernet
2. Our swing out in the backyard

It started out slowly, as though it was our first date ever. We chatted about silly things, like how our garden was doing, and whether or not the cantaloupe plant would survive.

Then the wine loosened our tongues, and suddenly there we were, all alone on the swing, the wine warming our throats.

Funny how you can be in one place physically but in another place altogether on another level.

We weren’t in our swing in our backyard. We were in a tropical paradise, the two of us, with no worries in the world. We were laughing and joking about things that didn’t have the words kids, temper tantrum, diapers or bills in the sentences. We joked about when we first started dating. We laughed about my husband’s old roommates, all of whom were crazy. We talked about the long commute we used to have just to see each other, when we were both finishing up graduate school and living an hour away from one another.

Suddenly, our life was just about us, the two of us, right there and right then on that backyard swing.

The bottle of wine gone, we climbed into bed. It was almost 11. Late for us. You know, we have kids; we always have to get up early these days.

And early it was. At 4 AM the baby let us know that she needed something. What, we weren’t sure, so she ended up in bed between us, her little fingers and toes seeking our warm bodies, bringing us together. As I lay there trying to get back to sleep I realized this:

Date nights have changed, as have our lives. Those carefree days are gone. Now we are inundated with responsibilities and burdens so heavy that sometimes our backs feel as they are about to break.

And yet, these are the best of times.

I would so much rather spend the evening talking on the swing than groping in the backseat of the car.

I would so much rather get woken up by a precious, delicious little baby each morning, even if it is only 4 AM, than sleep until noon and wake up alone.

Menopausal Mom may sometimes complain about temper tantrums, poopy diapers, seemingly unsurmountable bills and other atrocities that being a grown up brings (not counting wrinkles, C section scars and flab!), but this time, this backyard swing time, this wake up at 4 AM to a crying baby time, is the best time in her life.

And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

I recall being younger, back in high school and even a bit later in college, and being terrified of appearing naked in public.

Step into a locker room and all I could feel was my heart pounding against my chest as I walked over to the bench and tried to take off my clothes and put on my workout garb without showing any part of my nakedness to the rest of the women surrounding me.

They, however, did not have this issue. By they I mean the older ones, the broads with boobs down to their knees. The ones you really didn’t want to see naked.

They let it all hang out, all over. In my space sometimes, even, and then, rather than cover up their C section scars and their sun spots and their rampant pubic hair they jiggled everything around and, gasp, spoke to me! “How are you today? Good workout?” in this self confident voice that I couldn’t believe.

I, in the meantime, attempted to cover up my private areas with my hands or towel or brush while averting direct eye contact.

What did they mean, talking to me while I was naked?

Then I had a baby.

I went through my ob/gyn appointments naked.

I lay out on the c section table naked, a group of doctors and nurses watching. I was even asked if I could allow an intern to participate in my second c section! I was hopped up on a morphine drip, arms strapped down, everything exposed under the bright white lights of an operating room. What was I going to say? “No, this really isn’t a good time for me?”

Then there were the enemas because, of course, I couldn’t ‘let one fly’ as my mother liked to say.

And the shavings.

And the catheter.

There was the breastfeeding, of course, and the problems associated with it, which constituted inviting in yet another stranger to wrestle my milkless boob into the baby’s mouth. Nothing like having some stranger twist and turn your boob as though it is a glob of playdough.

There were all of this stuff where, you know, I was naked as a jaybird in front of all of the world.

At some point, I stopped being nervous about it. I stopped thinking, as I stepped out of my panties, “Please let me have shaved today!”

I stopped worrying that my breasts weren’t as perky as they used to be. That my belly wasn’t as fit. I stopped thinking about that damn C section scar.

This morning I went to the gym. I stepped out of my bathing suit with pride. I didn’t hide anything. This is a mom’s body! I thought with pride. I have battle scars! I have survived!

While I was pulling on my shorts, my chest still exposed for all the world to see, a young twenty-something bombshell walked up and, of course, put her stuff right down next to mine. Her augmented breasts were perched high on her chest, her stomach was as flat as a board. They could have developed Barbie after her measurements.

She stripped right there in front of me, tossing aside her clothes as though she were sorting her wash. Then she turned my way, forgetting (or not!) that she was completely nude.

I lifted my hand to shield my post-baby breasts. She smiled a blindingly white smile and said, “Good morning! Did you have a great workout today?”

Okay, so last night my girlfriends and I, all in our upper thirties, gathered together to watch the season finale of the Bachelorette.

We were stoked. Sure it would be Jason, we were glued to our seats.

Then our friend revealed her thoughts. “She didn’t pick Jeremy. Jeremy and Jason are so much alike as far as being settled and where they are in life. No way will she pick Jason.”

Oh, of course she will, we said. She had to. Jesse is, well, he seems kind of young, right?

Maybe not so settled? He’s a pro snowboarder, not that there is anything wrong with that. But isn’t he the kind of guy you date? Isn’t Jason the kind of guy you marry?

Besides, her family loved Jason.

Yes, yes, it will definitely be . . .

Jesse?

Wow, I could have fallen out of my chair.

Oh wait, I did.

After I cursed a few times.

Jesse’s cute, he is, and I’m sure he is a great guy.

But still . . .

Then I realized the issue. Jason is older. Like me. Not as old as me. You know, hitting male menopause old, hair falling out old, hormones raging old.

But he is older. Has a kid. An ex wife.

Jesse, however, is young like her. He hasn’t been through the whole marriage and children process. He’s, well, fresh.

He can stay up late at night. He can go out and be adventurous. He doesn’t have a young one at home to think about, to consider.

Things change when you get married and have kids.

That I was confused and, well, a bit upset with her choice wasn’t a reflection on what a bad picker she was.

Instead, it was a reflection on my non-youthful age.

You see, once you hit old you stop thinking that the crazy carefree guys are attractive and instead you look more at the mature ones. The ones who will be there when the kid pukes all over your shirt in the middle of the night. The ones who have twenty bucks in their pockets at all times.

The ones who don’t say Rad in everyday conversation.

While Jason appealed to the girls at our table who were screaming at the television and trying hard not to spill our red wine as we shook our fists at the screen, I’m going to venture to guess that the younger girls around America, those in their twenties, totally understood and were shooting their fists up in the air in a congratulatory THANK HEAVENS wave when Deanne told Jason to get up off of his knee. (Interject here: Poor, poor guy).