MAM Bloggers Unite

Middle Aged Mothers (MAMS) are being heard from!

[Editorial note: In response to questions, MAMS are ageless and sexless - you just have to be a person who is raising kids - and you feel your age! And that doesn't exclude caregivers whose children have let the nest or have their own nest. We never stop being caregivers, regardless of the age of the kids]

I don't think any post I've written has ever generated such thoughtful and lengthy comments. I am heartened to discover lots of MAMS who are using the Internet to express themselves and to follow threads of interest with others in similar circumstances.

MAMS - not sure I am wedded to that acronym as it reminds me of stout grey haired women with tight perms. I'm open to anyone's suggestions, but rather  than dwell on a moniker,  we need to celebrate our commonality - and our diversity. I have heard from women who embrace a variety of lives from across the world, but in the variety are the common themes of raising children, earning a living, keeping a household, caring for aged parents, and mercifully, still pursuing a fertile creative life, whether it be repairing tractors or drawing or baking or poetry - or blogging.

Those of you who've been around here for awhile know I turned 50 last year and I approached it like a motorcycle speeding towards a brick wall. I had some health issues and a suddenly almost-empty nest and an overwhelming job. It seemed like the last half of my forties was spent being made aware of what I lacked: income, a career path, fitness, children who needed me, and healthy knees. Last year was a year that I wouldn't want to repeat for various reasons concerning more than my personal situation, but now that it's over, I find myself with renewed energy, increasing optimism, and a joie de vivre that has been missing for several years since we moved.

The backstory of all this is that I learned that in order to survive I have to evolve, and though I was weaned on the breast of feminism and never thought I would be defined as my role as a mother, I had invested enormous energy into being a good mother and  I didn't know how to reinvent myself in that capacity. You could have knocked me over with a diaper when all this hit me. How could this happen to me? I had never been a clingy mother - I wasn't raised that way.  I remember being in college in a class with an "older student". She was probably about 35 years old, but we thought she was pretty ancient. We were discussing personal accomplishments and she said that her greatest achievement was raising her children. We shifted uncomfortably in our Frye boots and tossed our frizzed out hair as we rolled our eyes. 25 years later, I am the woman making this declaration and understanding, truly, that bringing life into the world is incredibly easy for some women, and incredibly difficult for all women.

So what does all have to do with blogging? It is a question of visibility. I have always been more of a non-fiction writer than a fiction writer. Good blogs are addictive to me. I drink them up, surfing daily, sometimes more than once a day, when I know I can expect clean, vivid, candid writing. I collect stories about lives different from mine, but I also hunt for lives similar to mine. I like to read how my peers are handling their life situations, always learning from someone's post that I am not so different from everyone, after all.

Judging by the links that I follow, there are fewer middle aged bloggers than twenty and thirty somethings. Whenever I read a story in hard print about a real time blogger gathering, I always cringe a little at the photos because inevitably  every face is as fresh as a recent college grad. I try to picture myself showing up at such a gathering and know I never would, being easily a generation older than those in attendance.

This is not to say that I don't know of many middle aged bloggers. My own blogroll, though seriously in need of updating, is mainly filled with luscious, diverse, and amazing middle aged bloggers.  I'd just like to see more, and I'd like to read more stories about men and women who have children spanning the ages from middle school to college, who tend to aging parents, who carry the weight of a necessary, but tedious job, and yet still have the desire each day to sit before a computer and write something about what they found refreshing, annoying, amazing, or just silly that day.

What I find is that most middle aged bloggers who have families don't routinely write about their children as the mommy bloggers do. I was puzzled by this and often hoped to find someone else struggling with the same issues that I am going through - getting used to kids being away, and then having them come home and having to get used to them as part of the household again, while struggling to define new rules and curfews with kids used to tremendous independence. Or raising a young teen in a world as profanely different from the world I grew up that I have to learn to sit without flinching while watching prime time TV with her while jokes about blow jobs abound, or suddenly feel the blood drain out of my face when I finally realize what the words to that rap song really is....

Perhaps the quiet timbre of the middle aged parent's voice in blogging has  to do with a generation raised more on hard print than on cyberspace and the pace of our lives. And certainly, as several who commented point out, older kids read our blogs and would not be happy to find their latest travails posted for the world to see. I just know that it encourages me to find out that those of a certain age, who write of their literary accomplishments, of their work day triumphs, of their latest gallery shows, or their fascinating lives of travel, are also juggling the dentist appointments, the parents needing explanations of the new Medicare rules, college tuitions and  kids who think that coming home at 4:00 a.m. with their significant others is perfectly normal. And ultimately, that I am not alone when I rise bleary-eyed and stiff for another work day and discover there's no milk or bread in the house, that I still have time to log on.  Priorities are priorities, after all.