My mother was 45 when she had me, her first and only. My parents had been trying for decades. The doctor, mind you this was in 1948, offered to perform a "procedure" to terminate the pregnancy. My mother declined. Then her doctor strongly suggested a Caesarian. My mother decined. It was a fine, normal (well, people who know me would strongly disagree) birth.
My father was 46 at the time, and unlike my mother shortly afterward my birth his health began to fail. He got Parkinsons, and in retrospect I think he had Alzheimers, although at the time we blamed the dementia on the experimental drugs. (He was one of the first patients in a clinical trial of LevoDopa.) At 62, he died of a stroke.
My mother, however, kept going. Sure she was in her 50s when I was in elementary school. She was in her 70s when she flew alone to Copenhagen to visit me since I was living there at the time. On her 80th birthday, we set out on a 3 week car trip to LA along the Southern tier, and back to NYC through Colorado and the middle. She shared the driving. Until adult-onset diabetic glaucoma set in, in her early 90s, she drove other inmates at her retirement home who were in their 70s and 80s and could no longer drive, on errands
She almost made it to 100, but was tripped by another inmate and with the treatments for a broken leg, plus the loss of a sense of independence when we made her stop driving due to the glaucoma, caused her to begin to deteriorate. After her 99th birthday she started having strokes, dementia, and rapidly went downhill and died 6 months later.
There is a more bizarre theory. I had been a serial monogamist for decades but had never met anyone that I wanted to marry. She never liked any of my girlfriends. Than, at the age of 53, I finally met a girl that I knew I wanted to marry. She agreed and we got married. My mother was too ill to attend the ceremony, so we drove down from NYC to Virginia where she lived, and showed her pictures of the marriage and got the strong feeling from my wife (20 years my junior) that my wife would take care of me for the rest of my life. Some people believe that allowed her to "let go." She was deeply religioius and expected upon death to go to God.
One man's story. In some ways typical and in some ways unique. However, it left me with no doubt that bearing me at 45 did neither of us any harm. If I had been born 20 years earlier (and, to reiterate, they had been trying everything that was available in the 30s and 40s) I would have had more time to spend with my father, but that is just the way that happened. Fortunately, since I was till young enough to help her with him I was able to contribute more than I might have been with a job and a family of my own.
One more story about my mother, out of dozens I could tell like when she put drops in Flo Zigfield's eyes and he kvetched about how hard it was to get good girls for the Follies, or when she auditioned and was accepted into the Rockettes but her mother wouldn't let her join having expected that she would be rejected and this would put all that show biz "foolishness' out of her mind.
She and her best friend Alice even before their teens wanted to be physicians. Alice followed that dream and wound up with a Park Ave. practice and an affiliation with Columbia Presbyterian. My Grandmother (her again) said that girls had no use for college and never let my mother attend. She picked up her incredible knowledge from my father: Harvard, John Hopkins, & Comumbia) by osmosys. I know that she regretted that missed opportunity all her life. I know that had she done that she would not have met my father and I would not exist, but I regret it in a way myself, so that my GP, my Psychiatrist, and my Dermatologist are all women.
I'd love to vote for a woman for president. I just wish it could be someone not as joined at the hip to big business as Hillary is.
