Ageless

I’m going to tell you all a little secret about myself: I have become my mother <*Gasp!*> and I’m trying to figure out when this happened.

Now, don’t get me wrong…it is not a bad thing to be my mother… my mother is WONDERFUL!  Everyone who knows my mother loves her (and right now, as she is reading this, she is silently cursing me for making her the subject of this post!).  She’s silly and wild and full of spunk and crazy and funny…she’s loving and giving and thoughtful and prayerful and gifted and ageless…oh, there it is…that AGELESS thing.

My mom turned 40 when I was 16, and golly, she was OLD!  In a 16-year-old brain, everyone understands that 21 is the optimum age of life, and anyone over 21 is just plain ancient.  Not only was my mom OLD, she was incredibly embarrassing too.  For instance, it  was LUDICROUS that my mother had to do math in her head just to tell someone how old she was.  And I’m dead serious about this.  To this day, when someone asks my mom how old she is, she stops, rolls her eyes upward to think about it, looks at my dad, and then mumbles “Hmmm…let’s see…I was born in….” and then her fingers start moving as she counts it up.  At 16, this was a horrifying thing to watch.  

My dad is just the opposite.  The past few years Dad has been suffering from short term memory loss, but it has not affected his sense of how old he is.  For as long as I can remember, my dad has told me he is old.  It’s his excuse for everything under the sun, and I think in some weird way, he gets some sort of satisfaction out of his “old-ness.” Honestly, when it comes right down to it, my dad could probably tell you his age in years, days, hours, and POSSIBLY minutes…except for the math part…that’s another thing my dad always told me when I was younger, “You’re smarter than I was, so do your math.”

ANYHOO, through my parents’ “ageless vs. ageful” thing I have seen a bizarre cycle unfold.  Mom, of course, has no real sense of how old she is, so she doesn’t focus on feeling old.  Because she doesn’t feel old, she is fun-loving and crazy and silly, which in turn keeps her young.  Isn’t that a beautiful thing?  Dad, with his overwhelming sense of time and age, focuses on his years and suddenly begins to feel sick.  When he feels sick, he focuses on how old he is, which in turn makes him feel sicker.  See the pattern here?  This is why I’ve had my fair share of chuckles over that point in life many people commonly refer to as a “mid-life crisis.”  Oh, who am I kidding.  I don’t just chuckle, I give it a full-on laugh-out-loud bellow!  My dad has had a few mid-life crises.  His generally come in the form of worrying about his age and his health.  My mom just does not understand what the big deal is.  To her, there is no such thing as a mid-life crisis.  It doesn’t apply to her likely because she doesn’t know how old she is.

As I began to have children of my own, I began to secretly hope I could embrace my mother’s form of denial.  And I did.  It came to full fruition one day that dawned last fall.  As I washed my face that morning, I peered a little closer at the image in the mirror.  My first thought was “Who is this person?” Then “Sheesh, the gray just keeps multiplying!” Followed by “Wow, is that an age spot?!” I did a quick mental-math calculation and came up with…gulp…40?!  Okay, wait…that can’t be right…do it again.  Oh my goodness.  I’m FORTY?!  Wait…did I just count that on my fingers?!  Uh-oh.  Houston, we have a problem…make that TWO problems:

1) I’m 40.

2) I had to count it on my fingers. 

Oh wow…when did this happen?  When did I have to start counting my age?  And when did I reach 40?  Wasn’t my mother just 40?  I didn’t think I was a day over 16!  Immediately the aches and pains began in my joints and I felt sick to my stomach.  “I’m OLD…oh wait, that’s my dad talking…STOP IT!  I am NOT old, and I can deny my way right out of this mess if I think clearly.”  And it was at that moment, as I looked at the strange person in the mirror, that I decided something very epic in my life.  I decided to embrace 40 in all its wondrous glory!  I decided not to care that wrinkles were forming around my eyes and mouth.  I decided not to care that sun spots were popping out on my face and shoulders, and I decided not to care that my hair wanted to be gray instead of brown.  I just wouldn’t care, because these things are good and lovely, and they show the world just how far I’ve been in life, and if someone looks at me and thinks of me as OLD, why should I care?  I am only as old as I feel, right?  RIGHT! I made no more appointments at the salon for hair color, eyebrow waxes or manicures, and when Girl 1 visited my stylist, Liz-the-beauty-maker, she always brought home messages for me.  Liz was worried about my loss of sanity, the dear girl, but the decision was made. 

And I lived one very long blissful winter in denial. 

Sunday after church, it was evident Spring had sprung!  It was a glorious day, and Cowboy and I had one of those rare moments of Ballenger life: sitting in lawn chairs in the back pasture, watching the sunset.  We began to chat about our 20+ years in our church (this is us 20+ years ago on our wedding day at our church…oh my golly we were young!).  We talked about various members past and present that we’ve had the benefit of loving over those years. I’m not sure how or why, but our conversation seemed to have started with the oldest and progressed down in age until we hit  the teens.  We stopped there for a moment to consider how long we have known Jacob, who only yesterday was a sweet, loving, smiling, huggable brute of 5-year-old kid, and today is a sweet, loving, smiling, huggable (that is, if you can reach him) very tall 16-year-old.  We wondered over the time that escaped between age 5 and 16, then continued down the line of youngsters until we got to Baby Luke, that precious miracle that our entire church family prayed for and fell deeply in love with before he ever entered the world.  He’s sweet and adorable and perfect, and we all swoon when he smiles.  I was focusing on the swoony smile part when Cowboy dropped the bomb that exploded my peaceful little world. This is what he said:  “If Luke grows up as fast as Jacob did, you and I will be old codgers before we know it.  When Luke is 20…we’ll be in our sixties.”  I was stunned.  Are you KIDDING ME?  SIXTIES?!  Wait, my mom is 60-something…I can’t be SIXTY!

This of course started my head spinning and aches and pains began in my joints, and I felt sick to my stomach.  I sat there in silence for a minute or two, processing the thought of it all.  Then with all of the energy my ancient body could muster, I looked at Cowboy and it dawned on me that I had not consulted him in my 40-year-old denial and quest for “all natural.”  He’s the one who has to look at me every morning and every night, after all.  So I took a chance and asked him, “Honey, do you mind that my hair is turning gray?”  He looked at me with those loving blue eyes and his sweet smile, cocked his head to one side and spoke softly:  “You…should color it. Sorry. I guess I’m vain like that.”

Humph.  Well then, so much for embracing 40…er, ahem 41 (now)…in all its blazing glory.  So much for the blissful denial that allowed me to think my hair was still brown, and wrinkles didn’t grace my eyes and mouth, and my shoulders were void of sunspots.  So much for “all natural.”  I guess I’ll deal with my own personal mid-life crisis by making an appointment with Liz-the-beauty-maker.  I hear she has missed me.  Boy, she has the work cut out for her!