As a loser nerd who spent a lot of my young life online, it may come as a shock to no one that I’m a loser nerd who’s spending a lot of my old age online. I was online on Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) in the 80s, and the baby internet since the early 90s (when it was all graphic and amber and your porn was represented by a carefully arranged series of typography). I grew up on Usenet and IRC so of course Reddit is a comfortable place for me (although sometimes too giffy).
One of the subreddits I read the most it the GenX one. It’s great having one place where people from the same generation, all over the world, can get together. Because a great number of us were also loser nerds online, there’s a lot of shared past experience – not just through life, but technology and fandoms and jokes – and a lot of shared current experiences. You can find the elder GenXers guiding the younger ones through things like colonoscopy prep, handling topics with younger generations (coworkers, kids, grandkids), and the loss of parents and spouses.
A lot of people had terrible parents. It breaks my heart how many people had absolute nightmares of parents. I knew I had an element of privilege when I was growing up, because I’m white, we were solidly middle-class, and my parents were both college-educated. I don’t think I ever realized how privileged I was to have my specific parents.
My parents were both pre-Baby-Boomer. 1943 and 1945 (Before the end of the war) and grew up weird. I can’t really talk about how they grew up because all I know is what I’ve been told – my paternal grandfather was 50 when my father was born, and my mom was raised in a multigenerational household (her parents, her father’s mother, and her father’s youngest brother).
So both parents were just slightly too young to be Beatniks, and slightly too old to really be hippies (1969 they were married and working as teachers, and my father kept getting in trouble because he had a beard). But they embraced the best of both. Lots of books, sarcasm, humor, kindness, compassion, earth-friendly, folk-singing, theater-going, and hanging out with the LGBTQ spectrum before they even had all the letters.
Anyhow, I had incredibly cool parents and like most kids I didn’t appreciate it at the time because parents are embarrassing and yadda yadda yadda and of course in hindsight it’s easy to see how great things actually were, even if in my teenage angst it was all Terrible and Dramatic and whatnot.
My father died way too young and my mom (50 at the time) stayed single after that. We got closer over the years (we were never not close), and when esso died (when I was almost 50) we trauma bonded and she’s one of my best friends.
She’s been through a lot. Her sister died from pancreatic cancer. A really good friend of hers died from pancreatic cancer. One of my friends that she’d known since I was in college died of pancreatic cancer (hell of a trend, right?). She lost two toes due to injury and had cataract surgery on both eyes and ended up with better vision that she had most of her life. She survived breast cancer and has been officially clear for 20 years because she just turned 80.
EIGHTY
I can’t believe my mom is 80 because in my head she’s only about 40. Of course, in my head, I’m only about 24, so me being 54 is as much of a shock as her being 80.
My mom is also hella cute. She’s just a little over 5 feet tall and petite. She’s convinced she’s fat, but she’s eighty! She’s in amazing shape for 80 (despite the toes). Her hair is still dark, her eyes are still bright, and her mind is razor sharp (and sometimes lethal). She uses a cane and she walks a little slow, but come ON. She’s 80! And she might need reading glasses now.
We went out for her birthday. We went to a fancy place for lunch, then bought hardware store flowers, then went home and planted the flowers. We went out another day for lunch and coffee and pastries. Two days later she had a doctor appointment and we went out for lunch afterward. We go out at least once a week.
She’s also realized that not only am I neurodivergent (officially turned in my ADHD assesment paperwork, only 3 months late and slightly wrinkled) but she is, my father was, and my mom’s uncle (the one she grew up with) was SERIOUSLY on the spectrum.
Finding this out has been great for both of us. All our fights when I was growing up now make sense. We spend a lot of time sending memes and reels back and forth going “holy shit how did we not know?”
I mean, we didn’t know because people didn’t really have the language for it for the longest time, and it’s hasn’t been that long since they realized women can be affected too (Women apparently mask better) but that’s not the point.
We’re a lot kinder to each other now and know how to explain things because now we KNOW why the other person is stuck or upset or confused. We also know that no matter what else happens, we understand each other.
This is a really long way to say I love my mom. She’s turned 80 years old and I am so happy we get to hang out. I just wish I could retire now so we could go have adventures. I like to think she’ll still be up for travel and fun when she’s 100, but I don’t know if I’ll be up for it by 75.
Happy birthday, mom. I love you.