Age is a curious thing. When I was in junior high and high school I didn't think too much about age except to know that my parents, who were slightly older to begin with because I was a later-age "oops" child, and their friends were a little older. My sisters were quite a bit older than I but I lived in that tween and teenage "bubble" where I didn't think very much about age. I and my peers just thought about the next homework assignment and did that cute boy really just drive past my house?
College brought about different thoughts regarding chronological measurements but again, being in your early twenties is just too exciting to think much about aging, pensions, trusts and savings. Oddly enough though, I now understand that the twenties is EXACTLY when a person should be thinking about pensions, savings, trusts, and the big question, "Will I have enough to retire on?"
For Capt. SO and, I our late twenties and early thirties brought about parenthood and when your children are young, fortunately for most people, so are our bodies so you can keep up with your kids, have enough energy preserved somewhere within your body to withstand sleepless nights and very long days. We could even run faster and jump farther than our children........then.
The forties seemed to be an extension of the thirties, age-wise, and I don't remember much about my forties except that it was a very good decade on one hand and a very difficult decade on the other because we moved to another state in my early forties and that was a traumatic change for me.
In fact, I don't think I thought much about aging until I became a grandparent and some aspects of parenting reappeared in my life. Small actions like sitting cross-legged on the floor for long periods of time - used to be easy in my thirties but became slightly more challenging in my fifties. Crawling around on all fours was once comfortable but as time passes, so does the padding underneath the kneecaps and crawling around on all fours becomes an activity that needs those ugly rubber knee-pads used for floor cleaning and scrubbing.
Then I got to my sixties. Sixty-one, at present, to be exact. I find that this age, for me, is rather like what being bi-polar might be like. For periods of time, my brain can fool my body into thinking it is twenty to thirty years ago. Then, wham! My brain convinces my body that my eighties must be fast approaching. Sometimes this seismic shift takes place from one day to the next. One minute I can keep up with my sidewalk, crack-jumping granddaughter and jump for repeated unlimited amounts of time and before I know it, a week or two later, I'm achy and cranky. The crankiness may certainly be age-related, as may be the achiness, but I find it fascinating that they both can disappear as quickly as they came.
Being sixty-one seems like a gateway age. I can still climb around (however carefully) on playground equipment and I'd still like to water ski one more time, but I can also see a time, down the line, when the only water skiing I may do is in my memory.
Maybe I should make this my water-skiing summer?
Ancora imparo
