The doctors are younger than me now

And my kids are legally adults. I feel officially middle-aged—and it's OK.

Happy almost new year, friends! At this point in the holiday season I am, as usually, completely sated by and slightly sick of sweets, cheese, wine, and butter-as-main-ingredient foods. But my house remains replete with them, and a few more parties loom. I’ll be the one in the corner sipping seltzer and picking at the veggie plate. Haha just kidding. That ain’t me, babe. (Aside: anyone else see the new Bob Dylan movie? I thought it was quite good. So did my husband.)

But I ramble. What I came here to say is that as I look ahead at the coming year, I do it as someone who feels—maybe for the first time?—solidly and incontrovertibly middle-aged. And I’m feeling increasingly OK with that.

What’s that you say? That at age 49 + 1 I have already been middle-aged for several years now? Yes, yes, fine. But I’m talking feelings, not chronology. And I feel, for whatever reason, that I’ve crossed some rubicon where I’m finally accepting and settling into this new phase of life, rather than gaping at it in disbelief from a slight distance.

This is not to say that I’m content with every aspect of this transition. For example, yesterday, when I picked up my phone to take a picture of something, the camera was on the selfie setting, and I was looking down at it, which one should never do when one’s camera is on the selfie setting, and it was so terrifying—all the sagging and pooling and rippling—that I felt like stuffing myself into a trash bag and jumping out the window. (That’s an All Fours reference. And, no, it’s not actually true. I adore being alive. Nevertheless, it was a disturbing sight, and one I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to, especially as things continue to…slide.)

I have, however, gotten used to things like the fact that when I go to the doctor’s office, as I’ve had to do a number of times over the past year for various small ailments and routine tests, most of the docs look to me like they should be medical students (or, like, high school students?) not full-fledged MDs.

They’ve started using phrases like “as we get older…” and “as we age…” when they talk to me about things happening in/to my body, and the screenings I should be getting. As we age, our vision changes. As we age, our cholesterol tends to creep up. As we age, we become faced with the looming spectre of our mortality. As we age, we occassionally incur knee injuries simply by standing up.

Obviously, the we, when uttered by a perky twenty- or thirty-something teeming with collagen, is not about “us” but “me”—the lady with the crow’s feet who doesn’t think boba tea is all that. Is this phrasing something they learn in med school? With your patients over 45, be sure to use the first person plural when talking about the terrible things befalling / about to befall them!

The other day, when I went for a routine dental appointment, I had a hygienist assigned to me who I initially thought was somebody’s kid, perhaps in the office for “bring your teen to work day.” He used the phrase “as we age” in reference to my receding gums, which I found particularly absurd (and slighly adorable) given that the boy’s brain probably hasn’t finished developing yet.

At least the ladies who shove my boobs into the mammogram machine once a year still tend to be older than me. For whatever reason, I find this comforting. The one I had last time went on and on about her grandkids. That’s the kind of cancer detection small talk I like. Some whippersnapper talking about, say, the bachelorette party she went to over the weekend, would just piss me off. Overall, though, I’m OK with the idea of people younger than me ministering to my aging bod. I trust them. Mostly.

But the other, bigger reason I’m feeling particularly middle aged of late is that…drumroll please…our teenage wonder twins recently found that they both got into the colleges of their dreams—Wesleyan and RISD, respectively. Then, just this past weekend, they had the audacity to turn eighteen.

And suddenly, it all feels much more real: we are about to become empty nesters, with adult kids. And while this makes me extremely sad on one level, I am also so SO happy for them with regard to their college news—happier than I anticipated I would be—and excited for the adventures they’ll soon be embarking upon.

It’s a huge relief, too, to have the college thing out of the way. I can better focus on important middle-aged activities like doing acrostics, maximizing my CVS coupon/Extra Bucks savings, and clicking on neck cream ads on Instagram.

Bigger picture: I’m starting to feel a little more positive about what could be ahead for me in this next phase of life, terrifying accidental selfies notwithstanding.

I hope that all of you out there, middle-aged and otherwise, are feeling good about what awaits you in 2025. It’s gonna be a rough year on the political front for many of us, no doubt, but I’m hopeful that we can counterbalance that by focusing on what’s good and real and soul-sustaining.

As we age, it’s increasingly important.

Thanks as always for reading, and happy new year.

All posts on this here Substack are free and publicly available, but writing is how I make my living. If you like what you read, and/or are a reincarnated Medici, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription ($5/month! Cheap!), buying my book, or using this link when you buy books so I get a little somethin-somethin’ on the back end, and so independent bookstores get your bucks instead of Bezos. Thank you!

P.S. My husband, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Alastair Moock (sorry, hon, had to brag a little), just started a Substack, Letters from a Moock, to share his (excellent) writing on things like music, movies, politics, basketball and other assorted topics. Check out his inaugural post on the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

P.P.S. When I Googled “Letters from a Moock” to see if it came up in the results, the AI preamble said“"Letters from a moock" refers to a fictional collection of letters written from the perspective of a "moock," which is a playful, made-up creature that is essentially a cross between a cow and a moose, essentially combining the characteristics of both animals - large, gentle, and potentially a bit clumsy, with a penchant for grazing and living in a woodland setting.” The AI then offers up a series of ideas about what such a collection might look like, including: “The moock might describe its life in a forest or pasture, detailing interactions with other animals, the changing seasons, and the challenges of finding food.” Note that this is not an accurate description of either my husband or what he intends to write about. But props to AI for creativity. Now fuck off and stop trying to replace artists and writers.

Isn’t he cute? But neither moose nor cow-like.