I struggled with that for years.  I got myself into the mindset that I was a mom now, that I couldn't be 'cool' anymore.  I too thought that I had lost my coolness....truth is, I was just stifling it, and stifling myself.  5 tattoos, numerous piercings, a bunch of far out hair colors and styles, and more than a few religious disciplines......I'm finally happy with who I am and what I'm about.

Don't stifle your cool!  It's in there, let it out!  Who cares that you drive a van?!  Make that part of your coolness!

Aww, thank you!! 

I honestly think that everyone should embrace their coolness, no matter what their age or marital status.  You just have to work it your own unique way.....I have a poem about that, actually (I apologize in advance for the long post, but I think you'll get a kick out of this, Janders...)

"Growing Old The Willis Way' by Jamie Markus, age eighteen. (In honor of Jander's pink hair and Wahine's rediscovering her 'cool')


The day my great-grandmother Willis turned sixty-five
she decided she would spend the rest of her life
wearing fishnet stockings and red lipstick.

Her place of dwelling became Big Larry's sports pub
not because she liked to drink
but because she was simply aware of the fact
the the world's most interesting people flocked to Big Larry's
like seagulls flock to the dump.
What she didn't know
is that is was she who compelled them.
That in the hearts located directly above Boston's
biggest beerbellies
she took precedence over all things
bottled or draught.

It was she who taught the women of my family
how to grow old
the Willis way.

Now
her daughter, my grandmother
is sixty-five
and enrolling in ballroom roller skating classes.

She has become the old lady
she beats the Urkel-pants'd old men in the pool hall,
while discussing George W. Bush
and how his presidency
will bring about the next apocalypse.

She is the old lady who paints pictures of Jesus on the cross
with money seeping out of his open wounds.
All the while fulfilling her lifelong dream
of becoming a fashion photographer.

She is the old lady who turned her one-bedroom apartment
into a homeless shelter.

And as my gradmother becomes a great-grandmother
to multiple great-grandchildren
my mother will grow old, remember her Willis roots
and get sudden urges to dye her hair fuschia
and buy a vintage Cadillac.
As she reaches sixty-five
her vocabulary will consist solely of the phrase
"You go, girl!"

Around this time my doctor will tell me
I'm pre-menopausal
because apparently it runs in the family.

I'll buy myself a cake
and imagine myself on my sixty-fifth birthday:
streaking across the White House lawn, yelling "Save the whales!"
with organic red lipstick
smeared across my shrivelled little face
as I pull a bottle of malt liquor from my fishnet stockings
and toast my great-grandmother Willis:
"You go, girl!"

This is sooo how I want to be when I'm sixty-five...!"

I want to be a redhat too! I think you have to be 50+, don't you?

In the meantime, I'm signing up for the pinkhats!