Six Ways My Child is Teaching Me How to Be Forty (at The Mid)

I’m turning forty in less than forty hours. Preparation has begun in earnest. I’ve purchased night cream. I’ve begun to learn the art of tying scarves. I’ve made a list of disastrous-for-my-health foods that I can no longer eat. I’ve done a thorough examination of my scalp in search of the first gray hair. I’ve started reading faster so I can get though every last book I want to read in my life.

I’ve actually begun to feel wise. Not in a Gandalf sort of way, but in a worldly-urban-woman-hitting-my-stride sort of way. And then it hit me: I am not wiser because I’m (almost) forty. I’m wiser because my three-year-old daughter—for whom middle age is not even an abstract concept much less something she can spell—has taught me a lot of stuff.

I'm willing to share!