turning 30 and into my mother

Someone recently asked me about some conversations I had with various people in Chicago, and if I remembered any of those conversations standing out in my memory. One did: talking about how I felt about turning 30.

It didn't bother me to turn 40, other than to think some, I imagine, common things to all of us climbing the ladder into middle age, like, "I remember turning 30 and it's already 10 years later," and, "I can't believe it's been almost 20 years since I graduated from college."

While growing up, I never thought of my parents as being a certain age, never comparing my age in relation to theirs. They were just my parents, something different from what I was. I knew that when I was grown up like them, I'd be different than what I was at that point. Later on I realized, of course, that they were regular people, just like me. Still, it was hard to really believe that.

Obviously, once I got older, I realized that my parents were people just like me. I didn't become a different person when I went from 10 to 20, 20 to 30, or 30 to 40. My life was different, but I thought the same things, in pretty much the same ways. My looks changed, unfortunately!, but otherwise I was the same as I always was.

The point where the above dawned on me most emphatically was right before I turned 30, in 1994...30 being the age my mother was, of course, when I was born. That's why I felt _____ (I don't know what word to use there) when I turned 30. In a way, I felt that I was becoming my mother (for lack of a more insightful way to put that)...not in the sense that I was becoming a homemaker, or a musician, or a whatever. It was that I now knew what it was to be what I never thought that they were before...again, regular people, just like me.

Anyway, I knew at 30 that I was officially grown up, and I knew then what it felt like to be my mother or to be the age of someone who was, in her case, or could be, in my case, a mother. It didn't feel any different than when I was 10.

(The picture of me is when I was 7, in first grade. The picture of my mother is the only one I have scanned of her. She's probably only a senior in high school when that picture was taken.)