I bet lots of people stay up at night wondering how they could be turning forty and still not know what they want to do with their lives. But, when it comes to picking a profession, I’m a better-late-than-never kind of gal. Sure, I’m the only person pushing forty at the Trapeze School of New York, but that distinguishes me from my classmates Blayden, Jayden, and Oaklyn.
It doesn’t bother me at all that I haven’t finished the screenplay I’ve been working on for six years. Nora Ephron wrote her first screenplay at forty-two, so I still have loads of time. Sure, she was married to Carl Bernstein and was friends with Steven Spielberg, but my husband is on an improv team with a guy who knows a guy who knows Adam McKay’s niece, so, once I’m done, it will probably be smooth sailing for me!
Some women are bummed out when they turn forty and don’t have kids yet. But that doesn’t get me worked up because biology is a science, and, if you read the news, you know that science is always changing. Just look at coffee—we used to think that it was bad, but now we think it’s good. Tomorrow, scientists could discover that women are most fertile at sixty-five. We just don’t know.
One thing I never, ever think about is the fact that my looks are fading and I haven’t slept with Mark Ruffalo yet—because I am happily married and fantasies are for babies. I actually think it’s fair that men get better-looking with age and am super grateful when my mother gives me retinol cream for my birthday. When she was forty, she had to paint a thin layer of nail polish on her face to keep her skin tight.
Do I think about the fact that I’m closer to my last period than my first? No way, José! José is my rheumatologist.
Honestly, it never even crosses my mind that I’ll probably never live in Paris, or that it may be too late to get into acting, or that I politely passed when my twenty-three-year-old neighbor asked me to invest in Bitcoin. It seems like a real pain in the butt to park his Ferrari.
All in all, I’m super psyched about being halfway to eighty and really don’t think much about the fact that five per cent of Alzheimer’s patients get diagnosed in their forties. Did I mention that I never think about the fact that five per cent of Alzheimer’s patients get diagnosed in their forties?
The truth is, you can climb Everest anytime, with knee replacements. Like I said before, science is changing.
I love turning forty! ♦
