Too old?

The old mom.

That's going to be me.

I'm at an evening event for work a few weeks ago. There are lots of "young people" in the room - mostly in their early and mid-twenties. One of the servers, offering me a nibble from a tray, points at one of the twenty-somethings and asks me, "Oh, is that your daughter?"

I must give him quite a look because he quickly amends his question to an ever-so-awkward, "Orrrr maybe your, um, sister? Um, you look a lot alike."

I don't answer him. He quickly scurries off to the other side of the room with his tray of nibbles.

Darn you, you young whipper-snapper!

You couldn't just leave me my illusions that I still look really young???

I'm going to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, mom on the playground. Until this twenty-something server kid makes the comment about me being the mom of a twenty-something (which I could be had I had a kid at twenty...), I really don't spend a whole lot of time agonizing about being too old to be the mom of  a new baby.

Now, of course, after the whipper-snapper's inadvertent dig at my age, I'm kind of obsessing about it a bit.

Well, more than a bit.

A lot.

I relate the story and my obsessing about being too old to be a new mom to my colleague "C" who was an "older" adoptive mom.

"I was forty-two when we brought F home," she says, "so I was definitely the oldest mom out there for a while, but you know something? It really doesn't matter. Those moms who were in their twenties? All twits!"

We laugh.

"I mean they really were kind of twits but it was because they were SO young. But, you know, you stand around with the twits talking about your kids and all of the funny things they do and it's fine. No one really notices how old you are. And now, with so many women having children when they're older...chances are you won't be the oldest one out there."

She's right, of course.

I need to just get over myself.