This is 38

I am 38 years old. I am told that midlife does not properly begin until you have crossed over the road into 40, but I can feel age creeping down my neck. My hair begins sprouting more and more gray hairs, until an elderly gentleman at church limps across the aisles to our family’s front-row pew to gleefully crow one morning, “I never noticed just how silver your hair is!” Still smarting from his comment, a few days later, I walk home down the hill from elementary school with my son and another young boy. The boy grins and cocks his face up to my own, “Why do you look like Daniel’s grandma when you are Daniel’s mom?” Instantly, I decide that my fiercely-held beliefs about the power of feminism in sporting gray hair are outdated, and I book an appointment at the only Aveda salon in town so that they can eradicate all of my ever-creeping gray hair and turn back the passage of time.

At 38, my desire for accolades burns singularly bright. I apply for full professor at my university a scant three years after earning tenure and constantly wonder if doing so was too early, but this application process feels desperate, essential, a bright-line test of my worth. "So you're NOT a professor?" my son asks one night, as we move our overcooked spaghetti noodles across our plates. I attempt to explain the categories of assistant, associate, and full professor as we pass the Parmesan around the table and my children's eyes glaze over. "No - not a 'full professor' - I'm an 'associate professor' and I used to be an 'assistant professor'." My son is unsatisfied with this explanation. "So you used to just ASSIST professors??" 

Thirty-eight means life is full throttle. My husband goes to Florida on a business trip and returns at 3 a.m., only to turn around and report for jury duty the next morning at 8 a.m., where he is promptly selected to be seated on the jury. The kids are still out cold at 11:28 a.m. after staying up until all hours of the night watching old Disney movies. I need to work a full day at work. Our family is leaving for Colorado the following morning and has not started packing at all. The next morning is also the 4-H fair and we have not finalized all of the entries yet. Life is frantic. Life is beautiful. This is 38.