visualizing life at 40

By Contributing Mama Daphne Biener

Who is that old chick in my mirror? And why is she going to a PTA meeting?

Here’s the thing about life: one minute you are doing the Love Shack Shimmy on top of a bar, and the next, bam! you find yourself juggling the logistics of piano lessons and carpools and running for a position on the PTA board.

Me? PTA? Oh no, not me. Not that I had given much thought to what life at this particular stage might look like, but I am not the PTA type. The type to twirl hula hoops on a circus high-wire? Perhaps. The type to ride off with a cowboy night after night into skies stained by glorious sunsets? Could be. But the PTA? That’s just silly talk.

Of course anything is possible, was possible, and yet as I look around these days I can’t help but notice a dearth of cowboys rolling around with me in the hay and an abundance of letter writing and meeting attending.

It doesn’t take much to set yourself down an unexpected road. One day you innocently volunteer to ghostwrite a letter from the PTA and the next you’re embroiled in a political bruh-ha-ha.

And embroiled I had become. Unaware, but embroiled as I did my part and penned the requested letter. They liked the letter. So much in fact that the Vice President of the PTA himself asked me to sit down with him to discuss a position on the board.

I declined.

He was persuasive.

I declined, and yet somehow a coffee date was set.

But before said date arrived, a kid caught strep and a deadline loomed and one thing led to another and wham bam thank you me my name was on the nominating slate and nary a coffee had been poured. The election, I was told, was set for Tuesday.

Whoa Nellie! Election? As in running against someone else who’s willing to do the job? No thank you, said I. I was willing enough to take a hit for the team, but run in an election? Um, no.

Oh yes, insisted Mr. Persuasion, we need your brilliant ideas. You’re sharp. And gorgeous. And hey, have you lost weight? It went something like that, I think and before I could vow to never again to raise my over-zealous hand I was immersed in an epic internal struggle–

An election? What if nobody votes for me? What if I’m just a grown-up loser who can’t even win a position that no one in their right mind wants to accept…and hey, wait, what if I win? Which is worse? Losing an election for the PTA, or winning it…

I shouldn’t have bothered with the debate in my soul; I barely had a chance don pearls and bake a bundt cake before the deed was done.

Unexpected, but true. I am set upon a path, and in my hands I hold the reigns to the PTA Vice Presidency. So belly up cowboy and help this little lady down off the bar. I’ve got a meeting to attend.