It Was 20 Years Ago....

Eddie Vedder, grunge's poster boy, in 1992.
Girls loved him, guys wanted to be him. 

When I heard that Pearl Jam was celebrating their 20th anniversary this month, one of the first things that popped into my head was, "It was 20 years ago today, when Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play." Which really shows you how old I am.

I remember back in 1987, all the music critics were frothing at the mouth over the 20th anniversary of The Beatles' classic album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The DJs, VJs, and various talking heads played that snippet of the song--"It was 20 years ago today, when Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play."--over and over (and over again).

In 1987, I remember thinking that 1967 seemed like a million, billion years ago--a time of flower people, free love, and chicks with hairy legs (versus my 80's world of Wall Street, neon, and big hair).

Not surprisingly, 1991 doesn't seem like THAT long ago. After all, I was already an adult twenty years ago. Going from being a young adult to an older one isn't nearly so monumental as going from being not born yet to a teenager. Youth warps one's sense of time--while you are growing up, it seems to be taking so damned long that even five years feels like an eternity, let alone twenty.

Yet my adulthood is speeding by--imagine that.

So I was blown away when I realized an entire two decades has passed since Pearl Jam and Nirvana (not to mention Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction, and Alice in Chains) broke out and changed the landscape of rock 'n' roll forever. These awesome bands also convinced us to replace our boxy, Stop Making Sense-ian, shoulder-padded blazers and high-waisted designer jeans with plaid flannel shirts and ripped Levi's.

And for that, I am eternally grateful.

Rock-a-Bye Baby

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too selfish to be a really good parent. Because, as we all know, when you have kids, you have to put your own needs on the back burner. And I'm finding that challenging these days.

Maybe it's not just me...after all, Gen X has been accused of being an entirely self-absorbed generation. Oh, we're not the only ones. I don't think Gen Y or even the Millennials are much better. But we were the first to be labelled as such, and coming after the Baby Boomers--who were known for their activism--made us look worse.

Generation X's decades were the 80's and 90's: better known as the Greed Is Good decade and the Slacker decade. "Give me money, give me more" segued into "Whatever, dude. Where's my car?" Me, me me...we grew up with it being all about us.

So making that transition to parenthood and it NOT being all about us anymore can be really, really hard. Not as hard as I'd feared, though, because there's something in those pregnancy hormones that numbs the selfish part of a woman's brain (for a while, at least). But at some point, even though your love for and devotion to your child has not diminished in any way, the ME, ME, ME (!!) area of the brain begins to awaken.

And that's when the trouble begins: After five years of everything being all about my kids all the time, I'm finally starting to lose it. My patience (in short supply to begin with) is waning, and my poor 2-1/2-year-old daughter is getting the brunt of it.

She's at the stage where everything has to be just so: When she goes to bed at night, she has to have Dora and Blue Bear right next to her, and her pink blanket must be draped over her precisely the right way. The whole nighty-night process has become an exact science. If I do something wrong, she freaks out and we have to go back and repeat the last step...and thenmy last bit of patience dries up. I snap.

The warm & fuzzies now over, I raise my voice and rush through the remainder of the bedtime routine. Which of course doesn't help my little one stop crying. It only makes it worse--I realize that. But by 8:30 at night I've had it and just want to veg out (or, more likely, finally fold the laundry that's been sitting in the dryer all day).

So I march out of her room and leave her there crying. She's upset but so am I. Ten minutes later she's still crying. My brain about ready to explode, I stomp to her room and push open the door.

"Go to sleep NOW!" I order.

"Blue Bear!" she wails.

She can't find her precious blue bear, which is hidden in the blanket. I give it to her and she stops crying. That's all it takes. For ten minutes I did nothing while she cried...just because I was frazzled. I feel terrible and mean and like she deserves a better mother.

The sight of my little girl wrapped up in her pink blanket, cuddling Blue Bear, her cheeks wet with the tears she'd shed while I was trying to tune her out, breaks my heart.

"Go to sleep, baby girl." I whisper through tears. "Mommy loves you so much."

And she'll try to be more patient from now on.

Old Mommy on the Block

I didn't have my first kid until I was 36-and-a-half, which was just fine by me. I had plenty of time to sow my wild oats in NYC before getting married, having a baby, and moving to the suburbs. While I occasionally miss my old, crazy life, I wouldn't still want to have that life. I've moved on, and that's a good (and healthy) thing.

One odd thing about having kids later in life is that many of my mommy friends--ladies with kids the same age as my own--are much younger than me. Like a decade younger. Manhattan mommies tend to skew older--they delay starting families to further their careers--but it appears that the ones around here had their first child closer to the national average of around 25 years old. At age 25, I was going to Lollapalooza.

When we first moved here a few years ago, it was shocking. I didn't know anyone, I had no friends, and unlike my husband, I wasn't going in to the city every day and getting a nice dose of culture and sophistication. There were awkward moments while getting to know people: We'd be talking about the silly bands we liked as teens, I'd mention being obsessed with Duran Duran, and the response would be something like, "Oh, I loved them, too. I used to sing along to 'Hungry Like the Wolf' when I was five." Conversation OVER.

Things are better now. Pretty much all my friends are younger than me, but mostly by only a few years. I don't think about it too often, now that our conversations tend to be about our current lives rather than our pasts.

Every now and then, however, something happens to make me feel REALLY FREAKIN' OLD. There's this mom I know...we're not friends but we're friendly. I see her around a lot--library story times, the town pool--and she's sweet. Our kids are similar ages so we end up chatting. I never thought about how old she might be.

I saw her at the pool the other day and we got talking about sunblock, how we are super-vigilant about covering up our kids but often neglect ourselves. I told her that I use a daily moisturizer with SPF 15, so even if I forget the rest of me, at least my face has some protection. She laughed and said, "Oh, that's a good idea! I should do that too, or before I know it, I'll look like I'm 40!"

Oh, the idea of looking 40 to her was just ridiculous! Preposterous! Unheard of! Something to joke about, the worst thing she could imagine! I just laughed. I mean, what was I gonna do, say "Um, I'm 41, actually." That would've been uncomfortable and weird for both of us. So instead, I laughed as if I  could relate (Forty?! Eeek, blah, ptooey!), and took solace in the fact that she certainly wouldn't have said that if she thought I could be that old.

But I'm watching her.