Slow Study
| July 8, 2025I’m a slow study. It wasn’t until I got back that it finally sank in
I
owe an apology to all my friends who ever complained about how hard it was to lose weight after 40. My 30-something self just didn’t get it.
I may have nodded sympathetically, but secretly, I might have been thinking that your “struggles” were just a matter of willpower. Or getting off the couch. Or saying no to cheesecake.
I’m sorry I didn’t feel sorry for you.
I’m over 40 now. I hear you. I see you. I am you.
Since I mostly live in black slinky (or gray, because a girl needs variety!) skirts and loose shirts, I didn’t notice the weight slowly creeping in, like an uninvited Shabbos guest who’s expecting Melaveh Malkah.
But looking back, there might have been signs.
There was the time I flew to Canada with the kids. I had an unattractive fanny pack strapped around my waist, filled with Israeli and American passports. As the responsible adult, I first helped each child through Israel’s digital passport machines. You know, the ones where you place your passport down, look into the camera, and the little plastic gates swing open if the machine believes you are who you say you are.
One by one, the kids got through. Beep, smile, open gate.
Then it was my turn. I smiled. I waited.
Rejected.
No big deal. I figured something glitched. I mean, my five-year-old’s passport photo was taken when she was a tiny, bald baby, and she got through. So I tried a second machine. Same result. No gate. No beep. Just me standing there, smiling at the camera and saying things like “open sesame” and “abracadabra” as though they might help.
An impatient passenger behind me mumbled that the machine said I needed to go see a customs officer. Which I did — as my children, on the beeped side, began to panic that this long-awaited trip to visit the cousins might be canceled because Mommy apparently wasn’t allowed to leave the country.
I put on my best I’ve-got-this! face, walked over to the agent, and made a joke about how the machine probably didn’t recognize me since my passport photo was from my mid-20s.
She looked at me and, completely deadpan, said, “Yachol l’hiyot.” (Could be.)
I tried to explain that my five-year-old got through with a passport photo that looked like an angry, old, toothless man. She was unmoved. She handed me the paper that makes the machine beep, and I was finally reunited with my very relieved children.
We made it to Canada. We were wined, dined, and thoroughly overfed.
I’m a slow study. It wasn’t until I got back that it finally sank in.
Since then, I’ve been trying to adjust. Trying to eat better, trying to accept my new reality as a Shein “curves” shopper without getting depressed, and trying to remind myself that shedding tears is NOT the same as shedding pounds.
The plus side (pun not intended but I’ll keep it because it fits — ha, nothing fits!) is that my friends are also over 40, and they get it. They understand. They encourage. And they feed me chocolate and cheesecake.
So to all you 30-somethings: Hear me, see me, and just know… one day, you will be me.
And when you get here, I’ll be waiting.
With a slinky skirt, cheesecake, and chocolate.
(And no judgment. Unless, of course, we’re speaking about our 50-something friends. Like I said, I’m a slow learner.)
(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 951)
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