I’m getting old. It’s true. Little by little, I’m no longer young. It’s slightly depressing. Sure – I’m not really old yet (by no means am I approaching the century mark), but I’ve begun to realize I’m not as young as I used to be. There are too many signs: lines on my face, my body is starting to fail me, I realized I’ll be 40 when my oldest graduates from high school, and I’m watching as technology passes me by.
I’m still mistaken for a teenager at church youth functions which helps me feel the aging a little less. On Sunday, we had a combined youth meeting and since I’m a leader in the youth program at church, that meant I attended. They were numbering off the youth for discussion groups and tried to count me. It’s embarrassing (and my face turned bright red), but I recognize it as a compliment as well and I’m thankful for that.
I still get funny looks from people in stores when they realize I’m a mom to a 2-year-old. I’ve been told more than once that I look too young to have a child that old, and people are always stunned when I follow that up by telling them I also have an almost 4-year-old and a 6-year-old.
But, complimentary mistakes aside, I’m definitely getting older and feeling it. Last week is when it really hit me, and I’m doing my best to come to terms with my increasing age.
I was washing my face one night before going to bed when I noticed that there are lines under my eyes. Smile lines, thankfully, which I hope means I do a fair amount of smiling and laughing these days. But lines nonetheless.
The next morning I got to thinking and realized that when my oldest graduates from high school, I’m going to be 40 years old. Then my middle child will graduate when I’m 42, and my youngest will graduate when I’m 44. This scares me because I can’t believe my oldest is already headed for first grade in the fall, and my youngest will be starting preschool next year. It’s insane how fast they get bigger. At this rate, I’m going to blink and it’ll be their graduations.
In addition to that, I’ve started to notice my body isn’t holding up as well as it used to. I’ve been seeing a podiatrist because for the last about 1 1/2 years, my left foot has been bothering me. Turns out I have a bunion on my big toe which is causing me to have mild (but increasing) arthritis in my foot, as well as numbness in my toe. So I get to have surgery to remove the bunion. Lovely. To me, surgery isn’t something you have when you’re young. I know that young people have surgery too, but it’s the stereotype that’s getting me here – you get old, your body falls apart, and you have surgery to fix it. I was at a youth function a month ago and an elderly lady was speaking to the youth. She was preparing to have surgery the next day and commented that "as long as they keep making new parts and I keep making money, I’ll keep buying them." I’m not scheduled for a hip replacement yet, but give me a few more years and I’ll see what I can do. đŸ˜‰
As if all that wasn’t enough, I’m watching as new technology comes, gains popularity, and dies down only to be replaced by something new, all before I managed to get a handle on it. Take texting, for instance. Yes, I do have a cell phone. But I’ve never bothered to figure out how to text. Heck – I’m lucky if I can find my own cell phone number in the millions of menus in my phone! There was no way I was going to learn to text. My little brother got engaged on Valentine’s Day, and he texted me to let me know she said yes. We were sitting at dinner and all of a sudden, my phone (which typically has a dead battery or is on silent mode, but magically happened not to be either that night) made a noise I don’t believe I’ve ever heard before. I pulled it out and lo and behold I had a text message from him! So, wanting to reply and say congratulations, I muddled my way through finding the letters to type a short message. But try as I might, I couldn’t find the punctuation. I found the smileys, so I sent him a bunch of those, but no periods, exclamation marks, or apostrophes. As it happened, the water boy came past to fill my cup and he was kind enough to show me where the punctuation was. Boy was that embarrassing.
The other technology that I’m watching pass me by is the online contact management types of things, like Facebook. I’ve been invited to join Facebook and reunion.com (or something like that) and a few others in the last 4 or 5 months, and I’ve basically ignored the invitations, because I don’t know what they are, I don’t have a desire to learn, and I don’t feel like having another thing on the computer taking me away from real life. (As though I’m not busy enough as it is!) But, I was talking with my dad on the phone one night and mentioning this to him, and he pointed out to me that if you don’t follow technology, it passes you by. Before I know it, I’ll turn into my teenage memory of the old ladies at church who couldn’t figure out how to get a CD player to play a song. I always said to myself that I’d never get that far out of touch with technology.
Hah.
So here I stand (sit typing) today, watching as the world passes me by. I wonder where all the years have gone, and then I look around me and realize that I’ve given some of the best years of my life to my husband and my children. And that’s just fine with me. If I had to choose a place to spend my years, this is it – surrounded by people I love, who love me, and doing the little things just because I know it will make them feel happy or special. And if technology passes me by and I become one of the old ladies who can’t figure out the new stuff, then I hope my kids will be willing to teach me. If not, there’s always the restaurant water boy.
