Age

I spent five days in the hospital a few years ago when I had my surgery for . . . well, let's just say it was for feminine things, and let's just say it wasn't cosmetic.

Anyway, those five days were like a trip to my distant future, and the trip was sobering. One day (or evening, or afternoon -- you lose track of time when you're pressing that morphine button), I woke up from a nap and struggled to remember where I was. Robe . . . slippers . . . matted hair . . . . Oh, yeah: I was in the hospital, and I must have fallen asleep reading. My reading glasses were cockeyed; my magazine had fallen against my neck and was covered in drool.

I suddenly imagined how I'd be seen by people glancing into my room as they walked down the hall: Old. Nursing-home old. Worthless old. A Gome from the Home, as my husband and his fellow med students used to say. ("Gome" meaning "elderly," short for GOMER, or Get Out of My Emergency Room.)

Later that day (or the next, or that night), I was dutifully taking my I.V. pole for a walk down the hallway, shuffling, aching, cursing the nurses for making me do this; and ahead of me I saw a genuinely elderly lady pushing a walker. My first reaction, which shocked me, was envy -- man, I'd love one of those things.

I was able to stuff this chilling experience into the back of my memory drawer for a few years, stay in denial about the inevitability of my own aging.

And then my son turned 16.

There is nothing like a scathing stare from a smug teenager to make you feel like a Gome from the Home. You stare back for all you're worth, mentally straightening your dignity and buttoning up your pride. You attempt some imperious corrective lecture about his ". . . attitude, Mister." But even if he looks away first and grunts assent, the damage is done. It's all relative, man; and relatively, you're Old.

My consolation is that I am a baby boomer. Therefore, as I like to say, I am The Demographic. My age group gets the lion's share of advertiser's attention, reminding me how hip I still am (even with leakage protection!) My daughter's iTunes library includes some of MY music -- Crosby, Stills, and Nash; Cream; Pink Floyd; The Beatles. When my kids watched a TV documentary about Woodstock the other night, they were fascinated by the ethos of that time. I made the most of it, singing along with the songs, pathetically pretending that I was at the core of the movement instead what I really was at the time: a clueless 14-year-old in go-go boots.

Consolation, too, comes in reminiscence from the book I'm currently reading: Girls Like Us, by Sheila Weller, a wonderful intermingled biography of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. What a vivid, evocative trip back to the 60s and 70s this book is, especially for someone of my gender and age (in other words, someone who can still sing every word to every song Joni Mitchell wrote).

That's what my 50s feel like so far -- a duality, a precarious poise between flower child and Gomer. And so when I watch my son pull the car out of the driveway, I don't feel like his middle-aged mom; I feel 16 again, heady with the freedom of a new driver's license, driving downtown on a summer evening with the windows open and "You're So Vain" blasting on the radio.