Role Reversals and Caregiving: a Black Sheep Considers the Babygirl Culture
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My mother continues to make good progress as she recovers from her broken hip. She is scheduled to be discharged from her skilled nursing facility next week; we hope to be able to have her return to independent living in the house she loves so much. She will need some help from both family and professionals; I will do my best to take the lead role among the former.
On a related note: barring some providential turn of events, I will be giving up my apartment by March 1. I will put in my notice at the end of this month. Though I continue to find some writing work, for which I am grateful, I have not been able to make the kind of deals I did in late 2022 and 2023. The overhead on this wonderful little place is too high.
I have a plan. I will divide my time between my mother’s house in Carmel – and my children’s apartment in Los Angeles. Half the week I’ll be taking care of my mother in my boyhood home; half the week I’ll be on the lower half of my son’s bunk bed. My ex-wife would rather I stay in her son’s room than sleep in my car. My son finds the idea wonderful, as he is still a daddy’s boy. It may start to wear on him quickly, and I can always do a little couch-surfing as needed. Perhaps a cheap motel every once in a while for privacy? One thing is clear: even a relatively inexpensive studio like my own ($1,975 per month plus utilities) is, at this point, an unaffordable luxury.
Even if some new gigs arise, and by some happy chance I am able to keep this place, I will still divide my time between mama and the children. (I am at my most efficient very early in the morning. Most of my best writing seems to happen between 3 and 6AM, while those who might need me slumber.) I may pick up some delivery driving or Lyft work on the side as well. I cannot go back to Trader Joe’s, even though I would be welcome, as I cannot keep a reliable schedule in one place. I need to be free to move the 300 miles between kids and mama on a near-moment’s notice.
I have lived without a home several times before. I will need to sell or give away the furniture I have (storage costs are the same as rent), which means that in a few years, if luck returns, I will buy those things all over again. So many microwaves! So many couches! I like to joke that I am the Crown Prince of New Beginnings, the High Priest of Starting Over. Five divorces and many other vicissitudes teach you to travel lightly. My intellectually inclined friends ask about the books; I assure you, the art of losing even those is not hard to master. I have given away great libraries with a shrug. I have seen a thousand books go into a dumpster. It is a hard-won talent to live light.
In thirty months, my daughter will be off to college. In sixty-five months, my son will be eighteen. In another sixty-five months, mama may not be here. And so now -- now is the sandwich season. Now is the time to go all in on being the best possible caregiver I can be to those to whom I owe everything. I do not suspect I will rue it. Not having a place of my own or a place to unpack will exasperate me, but the time spent with my mother and with my children will not be regretted. I have spent most of my life being a taker, and a source of worry. I have been the Black Sheep of the family since I was kicked out of prep school at thirteen years old. Nearly half a century later, it is time for an old Black Sheep to become the gentlest and most patient shepherd he can be.
In the American Zeitgeist my female peers are having a different moment. On Saturday, the New York Times declared that Middle Age is Sexy Now. The subhead reads, “…popular culture is finally getting comfortable with the sexual lives of 50-something women.” Movies like “Babygirl,” “May December,” “Last Summer,” “The Idea of You,” “A Family Affair” – all released in the past year – celebrate women my age having passionate relationships with younger (sometimes much younger) men. In some cases, these women are married, and they either abandon their husbands outright, or simply continue with one or more thrilling and illicit affairs. The Times praises Hollywood’s tardy discovery that women can both desire and be desirable after menopause, and the article’s conclusion notes the real takeaway: “Women in midlife can still take baby steps, sometimes in very high heels, toward authenticity and self-discovery. Now that’s a happy ending.”
I have no interest in condemning other people’s erotic choices. Nicole Kidman, who is four weeks my junior, seems to be having great fun portraying not one but two women who discover deep erotic excitement with much younger guys. (“Who doesn’t want the best for Nicole Kidman?” The Times asks, parenthetically.) My notoriety derives from the unhappy fact that I blew up my fourth marriage, devastated my family, and lost my career and my mental health because in mid-life, I could not resist trying to prove that I was still desirable to much-younger women. Some people are better equipped to handle guilt and to hide their transgressions than others, I suppose. Why should it only be men who get to have midlife crises that lead to rack and ruin? (And to be fair, sometimes those exploits only lead to erotic satisfaction and self-discovery. Not everything in real life needs to be a rewrite of Madame Bovary, the 1851 novel that sees a sexually adventurous woman punished horribly for her cravings.)
That’s unfair, though. The truth is, as most of my female peers know better than I, that we ask women to lead lives of sacrifice and self-control from adolescence forward. Kidman’s character in “Babygirl” is familiar: the supermom who keeps a beautiful home, enjoys business success, cares deeply for her daughter, and does her best to prop up her husband’s illusions about his sexual competence. Most of these movies seem to have the same underlying point: “Damn it, it’s my turn to be happy. It’s my turn to be a little reckless. Can’t someone else do the fucking caregiving for one fucking moment while I go fuck the pool boy?”
Okay, that’s not a line in any of these movies, but it does seem to be at least one prevailing theme.
To which I say, well, “hi.” Hi, it’s me. I got my wasted, wastrel years in, thanks. I had my illicit affairs. I had my ego and other things stroked for a very long time. My body count easily exceeds my tested IQ. (Indulge the vulgarity of the boast, please, and chalk it up to an old man’s vanity.) And I got to know what Kidman’s character comes to know – the looks of disapproval and bewilderment and betrayal on the faces of those who did not think you had this in you. There’s a price for every promise you don’t keep, the song goes, and who am I to begrudge someone’s chance to pay that price? Particularly if it comes with really hot sex, and the even hotter affirmation that one still has “it?”
Been there, done that. Got the Wikipedia entry -- and the hit pieces -- to prove it.
I am no hero for saying that my purpose now is to take care of my mama and my kids. I am no hero for making caregiving my primary role. I am no hero for declaring that I am celibate and have given up, at long last, the temptation to seek out the comforts and consolations of much younger women. At 57, I am stepping, very belatedly, into a role traditionally held by my female peers. I am not sneering reproachfully at anyone. I am taking on a duty I shirked for decades. I am simply doing what needs to be done, grateful I have the strength and health to do it.
It just amuses me to be heading down this road when – if the offerings at the local cineplex and the Times are to be believed – a great many women my own age are going the opposite direction.
What fun to buck a trend. Even if, of course, it’s not my trend to buck.