"I HOPE I'M NOT AGING TOO FAST!"

This morning I was taking my ten-year old granddaughter to her fun and unusual class, DUCT TAPE II.  As we were walking into the school, I spotted a little white spec of lint in her hair and brushed it off.  She got me laughing when she said, “I hope I’m not aging too fast.”  We often banter back and forth and I know that she likes to tease me about my age, but it got me thinking once again about that whole darned aging process.  How seriously should I take it anyway?  Mostly I’m happy at my current life stage (pushing 64), but there are times when I get a little melancholy and think back a few decades when I had more energy and got a lot more looks and attention than I do now.  I’m coming around to accepting that as part of LIFE and aging, but it doesn’t always come naturally.  As George Carlin once said, “Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids?  If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited that you think about fractions.

Me and my youngest brother

Me and my two brothers

“How old are you? “  “I’m four and a half!”  You’re never thirty-six and a half.  You’re four and a half, going on five!”

Of course there are times when I make light of it all and decide to celebrate my half- birthday, even though it’s not as much fun as when I celebrated my kids’ half-birthdays. They loved it! 

Some years ago there was a Pennsylvania study done with 172 school kids to determine their views on aging and elderly people.  About half of the kids had contact with senior citizens.  Kids often started the year with stereotypical ideas about aging, but the more classroom contact they had with elderly people, the more their views changed.  I’d like to think that my grandchildren (ten and eight) don’t have me “boxed in” as typical of how someone over 60 might act.  I’m a little quirky and they know it.  I’m not a raving beauty and I often feel like “the invisible woman,” but at least I’ve got my wits about me and they appreciate it.  That matters more than anything.

Twenty years ago in England

Earlier today I asked my grandson what age he would choose to be if he could.  Without hesitation he said 25.  The logic to that, he said, was because it was one-fourth of 100.  He added that someday he’d like to be 100 because it was triple digits.  A budding mathematician, no doubt!  I think I’ll opt for something less than 100 since I have sufficient wrinkles already.  But there’s even a flip side to that, if you listen to the words of President Garfield years ago—“If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart.  The spirit should never grow old.”  I know that my spirit is still alive and kicking and not about to grow old.  Julia Child, the famous American chef once said, “Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”  That’s what I’ve endeavored to do over the last few years and I know the aging process will take care of itself.  No worries!