Way Past Hip, But Still Cheeky

First, the happy stuff. Self-doubt will always make a way for itself later.

Oh, what lovely news I have to share! My cousins (well, really my husband's cousin & wife, but I have appropriated the entire family to be "mine" as well) are having a baby! A tiny, little, newborn baby is on the way!

And this will not just be any baby, let me tell you. He or she will be a Cook family baby! Long awaited, much loved, covered in grace and so chock-full of mercy that the quality will seep out and bead up on the little baby head. Complete strangers will one day bend down to rub the goodness on that shining little dome!

So, as the gushing and excessive punctuation might indicate, I am delighted by this news. The parents seem like just the sort of people who SHOULD have a baby, really. Young, energetic, flushed with newlywed love. And the advent of this child will be such fun for so very many of their family members. I'm just barely on the radar of people who will delight in the new little Cook.

...And with that happy thought barely off my face, I am being beset by doubt. I can feel it down there on the floor, pooling around my ankles and headed up for my typing fingers. You see, I would like to think of me and J. as the kind of couple who SHOULD have a baby, also, but lately I am feeling too old and used up to be a vessel for such newness.

A baby? I'm too old for my cell phone, for Pete's sake!!

Just the other day, I needed to add minutes to my Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go-phone. (Which, in Virgin lingo, is called "topping up.") But I didn't know my super-fancy, 6-to-10-digit V-chip-code. (This is not what they really call it.) I clicked "email to me," only I had to answer a "secret question" before this feature would work. I had previsouly selected the question, as well as supplied the answer, so this was not like a pop quiz. Except, "previously" is just a little further back than I can remember.

First, I had to figure out which question I would have chosen: "Favorite concert band?" "Favorite singer?" "First kiss?" "Latest crush?" "True hair color?" I AM NOT MAKING THESE UP. Not one of them seemed like something I would have chosen, so I dialed customer service.

"Heya! Whassup! I'm Simone. Hang with me and I'll get ya the 411..." This is the computer-generated voice of Virgin Mobile. Yeah. Compared to the Sex And The City photos on every page of the Web site, the blaring techno music and the hip-hop voice mail system, I was feeling perfectly dowdy before I ever spoke to a human. Oh, and you know what the human operator finally told me? My security question of choice was "Who gave you your first kiss?"

WHAT?! That is simply not an important detail in my everyday life. Why I so chose, I do not know. I had to stumble before I spoke, mentally psyching myself out to determine whether I would have answered for the kindergarten "I like her" kiss or the 7th grade "we're going together" kiss.

So when I answered and the operator said, "hey you're right! Who's he, anyway?" all I could think is, "I am not young enough or hip enough to expend any more energy on this line of questioning."

...You see? How could I possibly go back to being the mother of ...a BABY?! Fresh-faced young people have babies! I don't even have personal ring tones or speed dial programmed!!

I used to have a baby. I used to feel younger. Now I have a boy. I am "the mom." And in dog or toddler years, I am about 47.

I think this is a fleeting cloud of doubt. I think I'll get over it. I believe many good things are yet to come in our home and in our marriage. Deep down, I believe. It's just hard, some days, to keep up the fight in our -- as it's so oft-labeled -- "youth-obsessed culture." I know I'm not hip, but I'm not ready to be put out to pasture, either. Dammit! Where's the cell phone marketing plan for people like me? Which companies (not selling cleaning products or toys) desperately court MY demographic? What are the security questions I can relate to? Huh? Huh? Tell me!

Yeah. I feel better. Now, if only anger could address crow's feet....