The following story was published on 11-29-95 and reprinted on 5-8-96 (Mother’s Day) for my weekly "I Wonder..." column in the Weston Forum when we lived in Weston, CT. When this op-ed was published Mom was the exact same age that I am now. “How old was that?” you ask. Why thirty-something of course…

“I wonder. . .”

Mom and I celebrated our thirty-something birthdays this fall by digging through boxes of old photographs. For both of us the something in thirty-something is a two-digit figure, which fits well within our tolerance for slightly-inaccurate-possibly-misleading-but-only for-the-best-of-reasons portrayals of weight or age.

In the earliest photographs, my mom has either a vampish angle to her hips, or a maternal glow as she cradles my sister or me in her arms. My own favorite pose from toddler years until college was a variation on her slanted hip stance that incorporated one slightly raised shoulder with both arms extended upward from the elbow in a “New York, here I come” look. In college I lowered my arms, parted my hair on the side and let it hang seductively (I thought) over my right eye. My social calendar was full, but to this day I have no idea who sat to the right of me in any of my college classes.

When I married I wore my hair up and whirled about in a dress of lace and pearls. Mom donned a pink chiffon dress that emphasized her tiny waist. We laughed, we cried, we hugged; but that was before we left the dressing room. When the cameras clicked we slipped into our roles with ease. Not one photograph will reveal hips out of alignment. We were the innocent young bride and the misty-eyed mother, hips straight, smiles demure, chiffon swirling.

In later snapshots pregnancy redefined my stance. No sucking in of the abdominal muscles for me. That protrusion, thrust outward with abandonment, was as sensual as any hip slant or provocative hair style. I dug through the box of photos and found my mentor. Her captured image revealed a woman with more restraint than I exercised, and the clothing of that era was designed to hide the unacknowledged reality of “where the baby is,” but I saw it in mom’s eyes, that same uninhibited joy in her fertile state.

Once mom became a grandmother her focus shifted. Photos show her intense enjoyment of each grandchild, but her communion with the camera seemed to disappear. I watched her assess those telling images, and I shared a disquieting reaction to my own birthday, a birthday that declared me older than I was ready to be. It was the kind of reaction I attribute to women without goals or vision beyond their role as wife or mother. “It’s not unusual,” mom said. “So much of what women value in ourselves seems affected by age. The trick is to feel young and enjoy life at each stage.”

My mom and I are thirty-something. When I talk to her on the phone she describes a new outfit and I imagine her standing before the dressing room mirror, head turned, her hands on her waist, one hip every so delicately angled upward. I wonder how she envisions me, and what I will see when I look in the mirror some decades from now. I hope, like Mom, to see a woman who is thirty-something, and still too young to be her age.