Geriatric

 I am considered a “geriatric mother.” Being pregnant and geriatric is a strange combination. I don’t feel geriatric. In my mind I am still twelve years old and wondering when I can get outside to ride my bike and pick honeysuckle. But there it is. Scrawled across my forms from the Obstetrician's office. 

Not only am I considered geriatric, my parents are geriatric. Ligitamitly. 

My dad is eighty and still a practicing physician. He drinks strange Russian soda and watches people work out Calculus problems on YouTube and sends my sister and I pictures of our mom.

My mom.

She was a writer. She had a little writing room in her walk-in closet. I would hide behind her clothes and listen to the sound of her big electric typewriter clicking away and breathe her in. 

She once wrote a story about watching her own mom slip away to dementia. 

And now she has slipped away. In some separate place but still here. Smiling at me but far away. 

So I will write about all the things. I’ll leave a piece of my strange humor behind in case it gets washed away before I’m gone. So my kids can scroll through the stories and roll their eyes and laugh at all the life I stumbled through.

Now we have another little one. And she has a geriatric mother. But she will know me and my humor. Even when she is geriatric.