No Longer Anonymous
And others acts of acceptance
I was recently invited into a shared Google doc and when I logged in, it assigned me one of those temporary anonymous animal nicknames for editing purposes. I am, apparently, an Anonymous Manatee.
And yeah, that tracks.
It’s spring here in the north where we are all a bit grey and bloated. I have also recently endured another nasty viral outbreak in the wake of stress and travel, and this time, it has manifested itself as open sores on my face. I am not only an anonymous manatee, I look like one who got chewed up by a boat prop. All fleshy and bobbing about in life— a sea cow, a water potato, an aquatic marshmallow with scabs.
Thanks, Google, for pointing it out.
In related news, I am turning forty-nine next week. I had geared up to ignore this birthday, to file it away as insignificant—forty-nine is an odd number with no milestone effect, no real purpose other than to mark the last of a decade. The end of something. “It’s just another day,” I'll say with a coy flick of the wrist.
But you’re here for honesty, so—forty-nine is actually a big deal to me. I made it through another brutal year of my kid’s incarceration and weathered a bunch more crap that I still haven’t processed well enough to share with you. The dealer dealt some real garbage for the last round, but I am still playing the hell out of my hand.
If for no other reason, I am here to celebrate that.
When I was a kid, I used to spend my entire recess on the swings next to a dark-haired girl named Nikki. Every day through first (or was it second?) grade, we would pump our legs up to the sky and sing The Gambler by Kenny Rogers—in its entirety—as loud as we could.
“Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’ is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.”
At forty-nine, I am so much better at knowing what to throw away than I have ever been. That is, I think, precisely what our forties are for—dropping the expectations. Letting go of the nonsense. Jumping off of the magical-thinking train that hauls us through our thirties.
Case in point:
No one is taking you to Ireland for your birthday, Bridget.
Take your damn self.
I am definitely not offering claims on the year ahead. I’m either gonna do it, or I’m not. It’s either gonna happen or it won’t.
Parole, better health, writing my tell-all book.
I now accept that life rarely goes the way I want—and certainty never in the preferred time frame. Just yesterday, I was twenty-five and this week, I’m forty-nine—with a totally different set of eyes, a different heart, different beliefs, and damn it, different skin.
I would like to take a moment to apologize for my former proclamations about graceful aging—It turns out that I will be spending just a few minutes of my “one wild and precious life” lamenting my youthful skin and formerly supple joints. It turns out, I lament—a lot. The truth is, you can be grateful and still mourn.
At forty-nine, I absolutely lament my changing face and hair. There has been much gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments. Sure, there was a brief season of acceptance when my first grays popped up but I see now that that was rooted in curiosity—the flaming afterburners of youth, the thrill of climbing to new altitudes.
I also spent my early forties eating up Instagram shares, conjuring the energies of matured muses like Helen Mirin and Meryl Streep. It never dawned on me that they both have professional hair, makeup, and wardrobe staff to help out with gravity.
The hard truth is that passing a mirror at forty-nine leaves me genuinely gobsmacked. Someone please tell this gets easier because I am not accepting my face slowly disappearing with any grace whatsoever. It was much easier to “accept” myself when my skin was starting to sag. It is a completely different scenario now that it has sagged. Past tense. Done deal.
And yes, I know there are levels to this, dear sixty and seventy and eighty-year-old friends. I know that you find my musings at this mile marker a bit silly. I know that I will experience more and more astonishment on this journey, if I’m blessed more decades, but nevertheless—my creases tour has begun in earnest. Even my knees have developed frown lines. My neck-skin started giving ‘tortoise’ this year. You don’t come back from reptile neck without surgery and, thanks but no, I’m not chancing death from anesthesia because I don’t like my décolletage in family pictures.
Maybe Anonymous Turtle is more appropriate, Google.
Anyway, I finally understand at my core why Diane Keaton wore turtlenecks in July and why Nora Ephron resonated so well. Year forty-eight was the year that I started considering filters. Then I deleted Facebook. Then I stopped posting on Instagram. I figure, if I have to use a filter on my face (which makes it not actually my face) the picture isn’t that important. That's not thriving. That's screaming help me!—I’m desperate to be someone else. And btw, the ‘90s trends on socials are killing me right now.
What were you like in the 90s, mom?
Forty-nine years ago this week, my mom named me after a first-generation Irish immigrant—a true Bridget if ever there was.
A 1910 census places that Bridget as head of household after she was widowed at twenty-six when her husband drowned in Lake Superior. She was left with five children under the age of eight in the wilds of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
To survive, and keep her kids alive, she sold hardware goods door to door on foot, in a region of the country that averages eighteen FEET of snow per year. She walked those streets in heavy, wool dresses and flimsy leather lace-up boots. She never remarried. She never held a drivers license. And shockingly, she never posted a selfie.
She just lived her damn life.
I have a picture of her standing out in front of her home, the one she owned free and clear as a single woman before World War II. Tough as nails, sweet as pie, with her shock white hair and deep wrinkles. She lived independently until her kids insisted that she move to Detroit with them during the auto-boom, where she eventually died on her eighty-ninth birthday.
Our name, Bridget, means strong. Bridget—the prop-scarred manatee, the ancient turtle with sagging skin, the woman without a filter. Let’s do this, forty-nine…
"Aging is not for the weak. One day you wake up and realize that your youth is gone, but along with it, so go insecurity, haste, and the need to please. You learn to walk more slowly, but with greater certainty. You say goodbye without fear, and you cherish those who stay. Aging means letting go, it means accepting, it means discovering that beauty was never in our skin— but in the story we carry inside us." —Meryl Streep
Coming up this month on Black Sheep Mom—
We will meet LIVE next Friday, March 27th at 1pm (EST) to discuss Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy.
Here is the LINK for the Zoom Call. (Passcode, if needed, is c6uW9A)
This will be the final meeting for this book, and all are welcome to join. I'm bringing Russian Tea Cakes (recipe share pending)—feel free to come with food and beverage or whatever makes you comfy.
We will meet again in mid-April when our next book (and reading schedule) will be announced. Reminder: we read one book per quarter. Please give me an idea where we're heading below.
Lastly…
We're still looking toward a favorable parole outcome. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers this month. If you want to keep the coffee flowing, we could definitely use a few more pots.