Boomers Get Baby Book Of Their Own

The funny thing is, Mary Lou Weisman had no intention of cashing in on baby boomer angst when she conceived “My ‘Middle-Aged’ Baby Book: A Record of Milestones, Millstones and Gallstones” (Workman $12.95). It didn’t even occur to her that boomers are crashing pell-mell into 50 and living to tell about it.

“I’m not that pragmatic,” says the author. “I just had this idea.”

The idea came to Weisman, as good ones do, in a collision of disparate thoughts. A friend had announced that she was going to the dentist for her “first root canal.” Her pronouncement reminded Weisman of baby-book firsts: My first tooth. My first step. My first word.

Perhaps middle age is a developmental stage with its own “firsts,” she thought. The notion appealed to her. And since Weisman’s mother made only marginal notes about little Mary-Lou in her big sister’s baby book, she decided it was time to write her own.

The book should make anyone who has ever turned 40 laugh out loud. And then reconsider that tummy tuck. Modeled after an infant’s baby book with clever illustrations and fill-in-the-blank opportunities, Weisman turns baby boom narcissism on its alphahydroxied, highlighted, neurondepleted head.

Consider selections from the book’s Horoscope. If you are a Sagittarian, you are “charming, optimistic, easy-going, and affectionate and have a great sense of humor now that your serotonin levels have been chemically elevated. You are inordinately curious about and proud of everything that comes out of your body. Don’t be afraid to ask the waiter to repeat the specials.”

Weisman also makes light of yuppies’ high-tech toys, their prostates and delusional belief that they can live forever, if only they get those 10K runs in every morning.

In sections such as “Teething,” “Toilet Training” and “First Words,” Weisman goes over the top, taking 40-something aches, pains and preoccupation with bodily functions to a hilariously infantile extreme.

“I love bodily functions,” Weisman says. When she first turned the book in to Workman Publishing, it was heavy on natural resources. “Have you noticed there are two pages on sex and six pages on gas?” one middle-aged editor asked another middle-aged editor. A long silence ensued, as Weisman relates it. “Well, that’s about right,” the second editor said, finally.

At editors’ request, however, the ratio of sex to gas is more equitable in the baby book’s final version.

Weisman, a free-lance journalist who has contributed personal essays to the New York Times, Vogue, New Republic and other publications, has written more than a novelty gift item. In between revamped nursery rhymes, cherry pie charts and dental charts, she includes subversive essays in the “Modest Proposal” vein, which take on the boomers’ infinite capacity for denial and failure to revel in the emotional advantages of middle age.

Like pot-bellied lemmings, boomers have bought into the notion of youth as a sacred generation to be venerated and imitated, she says. “Do you really want to starve yourself, make yourself sick, spend $20,000 to have your throat slit and tucked up between your ears?” Weisman asks.

She, by the way, is a fabulous 58, with a cloud of ginger-colored hair (it’s natural), and a sleek physique. But like anyone who has seen 50 come and go, Weisman’s face is crinkly with character lines, and her visage is rounded by what her husband Larry lovingly calls “extra face.”

Weisman has learned to revel in middle and late-middle age. She says it has liberated her from unnecessary guilt and has provided a sense of entitlement. She recently scolded a middle-aged guest who refused to say whether he preferred a glass of red or white wine. “You’re past the ‘Whatever’s open’ stage of life,” she snapped.