Age

I celebrated my 42^nd birthday Saturday in New York City.  Two decades ago I promised to visit New York for my 40^th birthday.  Years later, my 40^th birthday turned out to be Easter weekend.  My young family had other important things to do.  By my own choice the NYC birthday went unexecuted (a failed plan, remember February 7 post?).  My dancing, shopping, late night NYC trip morphed into a family trip to Lady Liberty, FAO Schwartz and the corner hot dog stand. 

Dictionary.com offers twenty-two entries for age.  The first four entries paraphrased fit my purposes:  the length of time during which a being or thing has existed; a period of human life, measured by years from birth, usually marked by a certain stage or degree of mental or physical development and involving legal responsibility and capacity; the particular period of life at which a person becomes naturally or conventionally qualified or disqualified for anything; one of the periods or stages of human life

Nowhere in the definitions does it say anything about moving from good years into bad ones.  I’m sifting through thoughts about age and marching through and beyond my forties. 

Some things I accept.  Age is a natural progression from birth to death.  A reduction of digestive stamina can occur with increased years encouraging me to avoid late night pizza.   Wrinkles and gray hair happen as people age.  My recovery from sleep deprivation can no longer be achieved with Coca-Cola and a Moon Pie.      

What I do not accept is that the facts are all downhill.  I feel culture tell me that aging past forty drags me on a downward spiral from youth (beauty) to old age (unbeauty).  I’m fighting not to let this idea take root because it is not authentic to my experience.  I see family and friends in their forties, fifties, sixties and beyond who are unquestionably beautiful.  Wrinkles on my own face continue to surprise me.  But they are only a problem if I say so not because they are inherently good or bad.  I have a hard time seeing veins in my hands.  I struggle to train myself not to see my aging hands as unpleasant.  But the work for me lies not in figuring out how to make the veins go away (although it does cross my mind), but to understand that veins and being older are not unbeautiful.  It is work to shape my thoughts. 

Going from youth to old age is not a trip from beauty to unbeauty, it is just a trip filled mostly with the unpredictable.  Much like the fact and fiction I accepted with my NYC trip - that a single party trip was better than a family tourist trip - I am learning that ideas I thought were certain about middle age may not be truths.