I ’m forty-one, but my nine-year-old son persists in thinking I’m only forty. He’s at that phase when children become obsessed with their parents’ mortality, and for him this takes the guise of frequent (incorrect) recitations of my age, my birth date, and how old I’ll be on my next birthday. I find myself unable to tell him that I am, in reality, forty-one (although I know for a fact I can pass for thirty-eight).
Louise, my Italian-born neighbor, is eighty-five. “Get over here!” she shouts to me over the phone at 7:30 one weekday morning while I’m in the middle of getting my son ready for school, making breakfast, and dressing for work. “Get over here and see how beautiful my hair turned out! I curled it; it turned out beautiful!” I count to three and manage to beg off without screaming back at her.
