Subtitled: Why I don’t need Mother’s Day Cards (flowers still nice though)

“You have beautiful grandchildren,” the Safeway bagger said to me the other day.

“Yeah, my SONS are beautiful,” I responded.

Jim and Ned, copyright Julie Power 2009

The cashier sensed an emerging crisis (a la India and Pakistan) and threw a lifeline.

“Boys, boys, help MOMMY put the cookies in the bag. Aren’t you lucky to have a MOMMY who buys nice things like that?” she said staring at the bagger who retreated.

It wasn’t quite as bad as in Fiji six months ago.

My twin boys, who turn 7 soon, and I were waiting for a table at a restaurant when the waiter complimented me for caring for my great great grandchildren. I laughed until my bad knee, arthritic hip and false teeth were out of alignment.

Jeez. I am 50. Not 100. And I look at least 49 on a good day.

In Fiji, older moms are rare. But in the United States and Australia, we are growing more common every year (despite what you bitchy cashiers at the movies think .. you know who you are .. yes, you, the one who keeps asking me if I want the seniors discount. NO thank you very much).

In Australia, where I was born and raised, the number of much older mums is really on the rise. The latest Mothers and Babies report shows there has been almost an 8% increase in births since 2004, with mothers aged 35 to 39 the biggest contributor to the rise.

In the United States, the trend is similar.

My cohort of procrastinating female friends (met 30 years ago now when we were in our twenties) includes:

• A 53 year old with a 7 year old boy
• A 54 year old with another 7 year old boy
• A 49 year old with a girl of 7, and
• A 48 year old with a lovely little girl of 8.

When us old moms meet, we feel normal.

When we venture out in the world of middle America or Australia, to playgroups and parks, we sometimes feel gray and ancient especially when helpful young women with kids the same age as my boys give me suggestions on how their mothers celebrated their 50th birthdays.

I blame my mum. Don’t we all? She really didn’t want to be a grandmother or a mother.

When I reached 41, she confided in me that she was finally ready for me to have kids and become a grandmother. Until then, she’d urged caution and told me to put career first. She had me at 21 straight after a miscarriage, and had another two within six years. By 31, she was going quite wild, trying to recapture her lost youth and by 40 was working until all hours trying to catch up her lost career.

While the rest of myr generation was shooting babies out in their thirties, my gang was working and partying hard, defying our dwindling and deteriorating egg supply.

Today my boys are 26 days away from turning seven and I am about two months shy of 51.

I don’t feel older than other parents most of the time, nor do I lack energy or enthusiasm for parenting.

Mostly I feel grateful that I didn’t have kids back in the day when my newsroom colleagues called me “scud” (you know, the rocket that could and did go off anywhere during the first Gulf War).

I am sad to think I won’t know my boys at 50.

And I do worry about embarrassing my boys, but hey, that’s already happening. (It will all be okay if I stop singing, talking, dancing, walking and breathing in public.)

Most the time they still think I’m okay.

And that’s not bad.

In fact, it’s pretty damn good.

And that’s the best Mother’s Day present ever.

Related Posts:

• The Princess and the Pea
• Second Pregnancy- The halfway point
• Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
• ChooseMyPlate.gov – New Dietary Guidelines for Americans
• Children’s book review & giveaway: Hush Little Baby and Sleep Baby Sleep