Not the Age of Dinosaurs --but of Sexy Party Dresses

Today is my birthday.

I’m 43.

Go on . . . tell me how young I look, how you never would have suspected that I’m closing in on middle age, how easily I could pass for a woman 10 years younger.

Just stop yourself before you ruin it with the kind of disclaimer my friends--in the name of flattery, I presume--tend to add:

“You look good . . . for a woman in her 40s with three kids.”

I never know whether to smile or grit my teeth. Is it compliment or condolence? Just what, exactly, is a woman in her 40s with three kids supposed to look like?

Haggard, I guess, from lack of sleep. Matronly, maybe. Or slovenly, with no time to style her hair or brush her teeth.

Well, there certainly are times when I’m all of the above. But you can’t blame my kids--or my 43 years--for that.

Although it’s true that children can put miles on you in a way that little else can, they also can help hold the years at bay, as they keep you anchored to a world that others your age have left behind.

Because of them, I’m sporting baby-blue nail polish and Doc Martens, I’m into Puff Daddy and roller-blades, I’ve got pierced ears and a toe ring.

And because of them, I must constantly answer questions with this recurring theme:

“Mommy, were you alive when the dinosaurs were around?”

*

We’re making the rounds of those mall shops that offer what passes for haute couture among my daughter’s preteen set . . . the stores where the girls from “Clueless” shop.

My daughter is looking for a pair of jeans and I’m sifting aimlessly through racks of holiday dresses--the kind of shimmery, slinky, glittery numbers that dot the dance floors of Hollywood’s hottest clubs.

I hold one up against me--a stretchy black velvet sheath--and turn to face my daughter. “What do you think? Maybe for a Christmas party. . . .”

She looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “You’re kidding, right?” Her voice drips with disdain.

I look past her at my reflection in the mirror and see a dumpy-looking woman clutching a very small dress--a young woman’s dress.

I turn and replace it on the rack, then glance at the mannequin perched above me, the black dress stretched alluringly across her narrow-hipped, tiny-waisted form. I’m not that mannequin anymore, I realize with a start. I’m her mother.

I suddenly feel cheated, ambushed by age. The years snuck up when I wasn’t looking, the calendar has caught me by surprise.

Some days I think I’m aging well. I’m healthy and strong and, heck, I was carded when I was 39. (Never mind that the store clerk was an elderly man wearing very thick glasses. . . .)

Other times I feel old and foolish, forced to confront how many--and how quickly--years have come and gone. Like that time on the airplane, when I tried to finagle a date with a seatmate--a good-looking fellow from my hometown--and found we had an acquaintance in common: His mother had been a high school classmate of mine.

Still, I’ve never been one to cringe in the face of encroaching age.

I was proud to hit 40, eager to join the ranks of sophisticated women smart enough to know what they want from life and mature enough to go after it . . . or something like that.

I joined a gym, so I’d be ready for all those young studly guys who, the magazines assured me, prefer women of a certain age. And I dyed my hair black, for a va-va-voom look that would go with my dashing new sophisticated-woman style.

But, with tending kids, keeping house and earning a living, I never quite found time to work out. And I let the black hair fade, when my young hairdresser warned me that such dark color “tends to look harsh on a woman your age.”

“A woman my age?” I said. “But I’m only 40.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “You’re already 40.”

*

It’s funny how your perception of age changes as you . . . well, age.

I remember as a kid celebrating New Year’s Eve--watching TV and sipping ginger ale as the giant ball dropped at Times Square. My thoughts would wander to the future. I’d think about the year 2000 and what a grand celebration that New Year’s Eve would bring . . . and what a pity that I’d be too old to enjoy it.

At 10, imagining myself at 46, I envisioned a woman far too decrepit to spend an evening guzzling champagne, kissing strangers and dancing the night away in a short, shimmery dress . . . which is exactly what I intend to do on that New Year’s Eve three years from now.

Now when I look ahead in time, I can see myself in my late mother’s sisters--their bodies chronicling the years that their minds and hearts refuse to heed.

They are in their 70s, though I remember them as vibrant and perennially young. Now this one has trouble walking, that one can hardly hear, the other has lost her teeth. I saw them last summer for the first time in years and was troubled by their wrinkles, their ailments, their age.

But they would laugh at my concern. After all, one has just launched a second career, another is remodeling the house she just bought. And the third has just married the love of her life.

I expect to see them on New Year’s Eve of the year 2000 . . . pushing 80 and partying down.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@la times.com.