Really Old

If 32 is old than I am on the verge of becoming Abraham's wife when I turn 44 next week. I say this because I just finished reading a blog piece by reallyexcited at the Des Moines Register, where I also blog (as anniegirl1138) these days though it is more topical stuff. He was lamenting his loss of youth (and hedge-like eyebrows, I think). I understand what he means about gauging one's own mortality by measuring it against the relative youth, or lack thereof, of others. As a firmly planted in middle-aged woman, I am painfully, at times, aware of the fact that I am considered "day old" or worse in terms of my appearance. When I am not being assaulted every other page of Oprah the magazine by remedies for my sagging skin and paunching belly, I am running across article after article in the life sections of the Globe and Mirror or the Daily Journal advising me on the proper attire for someone "my age".

I shouldn't wear my hair long. Nothing gives off more of a desperate odour than a woman who doesn't crop her locks with the birth of her first child. A symbolic shearing to remind her (as if everything else that pregnancy and nursing do to the body isn't enough) that she is not a girl anymore. Tight clothing is out. Form-fitting is permissible, but only if a woman maintains a form that won't offend with rolls and curves and less than perky boobs.
Personally, I don't think anyone is truly ever old. On the inside anyway. I still marvel at the fact I held down a job for twenty years and no one questioned my ability to do so even once (to my face and that I know of). I've owned two pieces of property in my own right. And I drive. Right out in the traffic with everyone else. Funny but this last is the thing that most signifies the beginning of the end in terms of youth for me. The day the state of Iowa, in all its wisdom (and it's way older than I am) deemed my old enough to drive. I was telling my younger step-daughter not long ago that I still sometimes am as amazed that I can drive a car as I was on the very first day my father let me take the car out on my own.

Nothing tips the scales irredeemably into "old" as becoming a parent.I remember the first weeks as a mother to my now five year old and wondering how it could be that I was being allowed to raise her. I wasn't grown-up enough yet. Surely someone would notice any time and come and take her away. Give her to some grown-up woman who didn't still walk the Barbie aisle at Target with longing. Someone who cut her hair short just in anticipation of motherhood and took notes during the birthing classes. Someone who didn't forget her just learning to speak in sentences baby was in the backseat while she was listening to Eminem (though to my credit I did quit when she began requesting the "stand-up song").

It's an eye of the beholder thing like nearly everything else. I have never longed for my teens (and my recent 25th high school reunion reminded me again why) or my twenties. I was smooth and grey-less and my knees didn't creak like the stairs, but I wasn't nearly as strong or confident or happy with myself. Why go back? Why even think about it? Life is meant to be lived in a forward progression with each birthday finding us a wee bit closer to the enlightenment or at least the wisdom to recognize who we truly are behind the wrinkles that block our morning views.

"I'll be old until I die" is what I think reallyexcited said, but the reality is that you will be old when you think you are and how near or far that is from your ending days is up to you.