The Adventure Continues
Age 58
…when I was young I felt old and as I get older I feel young.
Having brown hair with a touch of red runs in my family. So does knobby knees and a keen sense of humor. We also tend to live a very long time. Most into our 90’s and relatively healthy to the end. Those who haven’t made it so long ended their own lives. Something else that runs in my family, if I am being perfectly honest.
I wasn’t cut out for childhood and young adulthood. I found that time of my life very uncomfortable. It didn’t suit my need for independence and freedom from the conventions of everyday life on everybody else’s terms. I made the best of it but definitely not my groove. Instead, as far back as I can remember I have always looked forward to being older. Thirty sounded good to me when I was twenty. Forty sounded better than thirty and I waited with baited breath for fifty. For some unknown reason, when I was young I felt old and as I get older I feel young.
I’m a healthy fifty-eight now and can conjure up a bubbly feeling in my belly when thinking about my sixties. Thanks to the mirror in my bathroom and fluorescent lighting it’s not as easy as it once was. Yet, with forceful diligence and a touch of delusion I know aging is inevitable and at the same time hold tight to a belief that my aging is not. I’m okay with that for now even though it doesn’t always work in my favor. After nearly drowning white water rafting in Costa Rica and tearing my ACL four-wheeling in Iceland and in the interest of not being a complete idiot, I have had to counterbalance my bucket list with a “never going to do again” list. I don’t like this list. It reminds me of my eventual demise because as I march confidently into my elderly years it will get longer while the former gets shorter.
That sucks. So I keep this list of lasts in my safe with other important papers that deserve to be ignored, only consulting it when my husband gently grabs both my cheeks, looks intensely into my eyes and says, “You’re not really going to do that are you?”.
In those moments I try hard to remember that as long as you’re alive, living is a choice. Once you’re dead, it’s not. Then I choose wisely and remind myself how much younger I’ll feel at seventy.