Feeling Forty: On Fashion

Enter, 40. Enter, The New Fashion Demographic. Or shall I say: the Old Fashion Demographic.

I look around at the new fashions parading Broadway Avenue in Seattle. I was never eternally hip, but I do recall noticing new fashions and choosing whether I wanted to partake of them or not. I look at the puffy elastic waisted minis now and realize - even I wanted to wear that, I should not.

Young fashion, at forty, suddenly no longer feels like a choice. Why? Because I would now not look fashionable. I would look like an aging woman, clinging to youth. Ouch.

Jeggings? Joke. Robin Hood boots + cuffed shorts? Uh, not for me thanks, pass. Now to stay younger-looking, I have to stick to flattering classics. And worse - clothes that are hip and appealing to my demographic. The Born in the 70s and Now Forty Demographic, say Helllllllllo! "Comfort over style, baby, Comfort over style."

Wind in My Hair, Now - Still.

The wild hairs, they disappear so slowly these days I barely notice. These days as a mother now for nearly five years. Five years of now mostly keeping the windows rolled up so I don't blast the sleeping baby in the back seat. Five years of turning the music down low so I can hear my son talking to me from the back seat. Where is that woman I knew so well twenty years ago? The one with the wind whipping through her hair, across her face, as she drives with the windows down, cool air and cool tunes thumping through the car's body, feelin' free.

She's kid wild now. Laughs with abandon at her four year old son's joke. Cranes up at the sky and the trees with her 10 month old baby in arms looking up too, sharing love for the blue and the green, the shape of the earth above us.

She's definitely kid wild now. This woman who once drove a motorcycle under a moving truck. The one who knew she'd have made a great EMT or stunt woman had it occured to her just a little bit sooner along the career path. Her risks now? The most fearless includes: a hand down the back pants of her baby's dipe, to check for - well, you know. Brave mama, indeed. Fearless lover of two.