Midlife Crisis

Why must my midlife crisis be education, instead of a red sports car and a younger man? Why must I ponder the classics and learn the language that is dead instead of getting lipo suction and big lips and breasts? Is it important for me to get a PhD before I die wouldn’t a nice body do? I mean why do I have to know all that there is to know about the cannon of literature? I am thinking it will make me a better writer, and perhaps, I am right. Maybe it will give me great conversational skills, that is, when I am around people who have actually read something besides Green Eggs and Ham. These and more are the questions that I ask myself everyday. Like this one: why can I not just walk away from my children and say sink or swim? Other mothers do it and their children swim, their swallows fly, but I can’t, I have to look back and the first sign of trouble, I have to help. Do I possess a gene that makes me incapable of going the easy route? I need to know; I must find out, I can’t go on without knowing what it is that makes me like this. I take drugs, good drugs; drugs my shrink hands me by the handful, Xanax, Trilipital, Lexapro, and Effexer. I have no reason to be so thoughtful, I have chemicals that are suppose to make me unattached, less likely to stress, but they are only making me laugh. Yes, laugh. I do that all the time, well that and talk. Yack, yack, yack. I tell my professors to touch their nose if I am talking too much. Today is the first day in weeks that I have been totally alone, my daughter decided she was going to be a mother today so she took the children and left, my husband is at work, and my son is staying in his apartment, but I am sitting here worrying about my grandchildren instead of writing, or reading, or even doing what feels good which would be to sleep. I could take the mineral salts bath that I have wanted to do for I don’t know how long but instead, I want to dial her number, his number, and their numbers and see how they are. I resist the temptation. Then I read the news and see where women my age are being told their children have been killed, their grandchildren killed, and I am stressing because I can’t turn loose. Maybe, it’s a good thing, this mental illness that I have, this bi-polar, happy, sad, but always attached. I don’t think I will ever not be involved in my grandchildren’s lives. I suppose I will call and just make sure they are fine and tell my daughter I bought the baby some new socks and shoes, and my son forgot his birthday money. I don’t think that will hurt, will it?