I never really thought very much about life after the age of 30. I spent all of my adolescence waiting for the technicolour dreamscape of my 20s, and if I tried to picture a time beyond them, the screen would just go black. Like many young people with the privilege of inexperience, I figured the rest of my life would be a foregone conclusion.
At the time, television shows, books, films, and stories told and retold around the table on Christmas Day seemed to support this: by 30, you ought to have your life figured out. If you came of age in the early aughts or before, you learned that you had an expiration date, and the more candles you accumulated on your birthday cake, the staler you became. Credit: Robin Cowcher For as much as they’re revered and referenced now, the Sex and the City girls spent the show’s entire run trying to play catch-up to their better-settled peers.
Charlotte began lying about her age at 36, and when Miranda was made a partner at her law firm, it was a consolation prize for being unmarried at 35. Bridget Jones was a cautionary tale. The cast of Cheers looked like their next milestone would be retirement, and in the first season of Seinfeld , Elaine was — get this — 27.
Let’s look closer. By my paternal grandmother’s early 30s, she had two sons and at least three languages under her belt, and the life she had before she escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia was a distant memory. By the same age, my mother had three kids, two ex-husbands, a dou.
