Excerpt from Hot Flashes and Half Ironmans (Women’s Health and Athletics)
I don’t ask much.
They say youth is wasted on the young. They are full of it.
Youth is too full of angst and drama for me. Give me middle age, wisdom, and a healthy libido any day. Give me some crappy life experiences so I’ll recognize awesome when it lands in my lap. Give me cellulite and wrinkles so I can get the hell over myself. Give me boredom so I can appreciate a challenge, and give me a failed marriage to humble me. Give me hot flashes and migraines so I can enjoy feeling good the rest of the time.
And then, then . . . give me a hot day in June. Let me fill our beater Suburban to its capacity with tweens and teens, some of them mine, some of them his. Let us pick up my second and last husband at the airport after a long and tiring business trip, let us giggle all the way home and nearly burst with the pressure of our shared secret. We have a surprise for him, you see.
We whisk him home to his bicycle and tri bag.
“What’s this?” he asks, dark circles under his camouflage-colored eyes. Eyes that are sparkling now between the red lines.
“Here!” his daughter Liz cries, unable to hold it in any longer. She waggles her hand at Clark and Susanne, who pull t-shirts on over their heads. The hand-ironed custom logo is slightly askew on each of them. It reads “The Eric Ralph Hutchins First Annual Invitational Triathlon” above a (really bad) picture of Eric.
“Those are great, guys, thanks,” he says as Liz hands him his and he slips it on.
But that’s not all. “Put your swimsuit on, honey, because the race starts in fifteen minutes,” I say.
Now he’s grinning ear to ear. We all jump on our bikes and pedal over to the Marilyn Estates pool. We swim ten thrashing, splashing, laughing laps of the tiny rectangle of water. We race our motley crew of bicycles around the block. And we finish by running figure eights around the trees in the park by the pool. Fifteen minutes later, we each get a trophy, with awards for first (Liz), second (Eric), poutiest (Susanne), goofiest (Clark), and best-looking, AKA last (me). We’ve attracted quite a crowd, and they cheer as the kids present the awards.
My husband doesn’t seem tired anymore. He looks like the luckiest middle-aged man in the history of the world. Although he doesn’t look middle-aged, which makes me the luckiest middle-aged woman ever.
This. Give me this. Or something a whole lot like it. Give me beautiful days together, active and alive, happy and feeling fifteen instead of closing in on fifty.
This, or something like it.
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