Archive for the ‘aging’ Category

One of the nice things about my relatively new job is the work schedule. Being a green company, we’re encouraged to adopt a 45/35 schedule resulting in every other Friday off – thus saving gas and commuting costs. As eco-aware as I am, I was attracted to the idea of a string of three-day weekends more than the idea of being ecologically conscientious. In fact – I’ve used my car more on those Fridays off than the the five minute commute to work each day.

Take my most recent free Friday, for instance. My trek took me northward to the the big city in search of that holy grail of the female persuasion: a comfortable bra. My research pointed me to a little shop in a neighborhood I am well familiar with and as a result, I took a side trip down memory lane.

A few weeks ago I’d made contact with my best friend from high school. After about thirty-five years of wondering where each other was, Facebook provided the conduit for our re-connection. A few e-mails and a long phone conversation later, I was immersed in a flood of memories. I’m still searching for photographs after receiving some from her of the summer of our trip to Europe. But I digress…

When I got to the city, I drove by a couple of my childhood homes and went looking for my old high school. My last visit was with my brother ten years ago, but, oddly, I had difficulty finding it. I thought driving the route my mom took every school day would spark my memory of how to get there, but after winding through old familiar neighborhoods, I gave in and relied on an iPhone gps app to get me there. Embarrassing.

My school is abandoned now. Fifty-nine years old and she’s a decaying, weed-ridden and rusty old lady. As I drove around the building, echoes of memories bounced off the graffitied walls. My mind’s eye filled with ghosts of the football team practicing on the over-grown field, class-mates filling the breeze-way between the cafeteria and the main building; running down the hall to choir class…

Champions of Yester-year

I ‘came of age’ while at that school. From seventh through twelfth grade I matured from a goofy thirteen year old to a rebellious-ish hippie by graduation date. I found my ‘clique’ in tenth grade, fell in and out of love in pace with my surging hormones, experienced a string of ‘firsts’ and graduated amidst a torrent of teenage drama and looming adulthood. They were some of the best years of my life.

There have been some odd parallels to that time within the last few years of my life – not that I’m regressing to my teen years, merely experiencing changes, growth, new friendships, hormonal shifts… That high-school version of myself is always with me, though, reminding me to lighten up and keeping me as immature as I ever was.

I’m glad she’s stuck around. And sad that a symbol of that defining era will soon be eradicated and replaced to be remembered only within the yellowed and cracked pages of dusty yearbooks and a dwindling number of alums left behind.

Rest in peace old girl.

John Marshall HS 1950 - 2007

It is such a cliche, but I am at a loss for any other way to express it.

Time is moving way too fast.

In a few hours from now, around 12:30 am, April 29, the clock will be at the hour of my birth, which happened fifty-seven years ago. It is not possible that it has been an entire year since I posted that picture to the right.

That’s my favorite picture of me. She’s a goofy kid who turned into a goofy adult and is now a goofy geezer. I found it in my father’s things when we cleaned out his apartment last year.

This past year’s been kind of a tough one. A year I don’t want to repeat – ever. I’m glad to report, however, that right at this moment I’m feeling better than I have in a very long time.

Today at work during my weekly “relief” receptionist hour, a woman came in who was my age. I know that because part of the process in this office is to validate ID – license and social security card, please.

She looked fifty-seven. She looked like a senior citizen. I felt a pang in my stomach. Do I look like her fifty-seven? Must I accept that I’ve now passed the threshold and entered fully into senior-hood?

I’m not an overly vain person. My looks aren’t that important to me (save for a brief period of girly-ness a while back that resulted in bras and painted toe-nails… I got over that, thank goodness…) … but, I am concerned about looking old before I’m ready (as if one can ever be ready).

I am fortunate that my parents endowed me with a genetic framework that has kept me younger looking than my actual years most of my life. But, that fountain of youth isn’t going to last forever – and it isn’t.

The face is sagging, among other things. Wrinkles are increasing and deepening. Gray hair is hiding under the dye job.

I just don’t feel it, though. I am way more immature than my years would suggest. Yet I wonder if I’m not breaking some unwritten rule somewhere that says at some point you have to be your age. I feel that I have to be careful not to end up a fool.

These are things that swirl through my thoughts more frequently these days but that I, for the most part, have been successful at ignoring. In spite of my fits of conern, I’m optimistic that, no matter how wrinkly or gray I get, I will avoid becoming an old fuddy duddy.

I may take more naps as time goes on, but I fully intend to rock on as long as this body lets me.

And I have to tell ya’ – I was encouraged when I renewed my drivers license today. The agent had to call to get clearance to override the new facial recognition dealio.

My new picture had to be taken with glasses off and the machine couldn’t match my face to the old picture. When she called to get the clearance, it almost wasn’t granted. The person on the other end of the phone said the old pic and the new pic were two different people.

“Her hair is blonder, there’re no glasses and she’s smiling.”

Finally, it was resolved and I went on my way with my new license. One, as a matter of fact, I don’t mind showing. The first license picture I’ve ever liked. Just as much as I love that goofy kid in the picture above, I’m really liking the goofy geezer in the picture below.