Growing up and having an old soul made me lean into the aging process, and I couldn’t wait to get older when I was a kid. To this day, I remember the anger and frustration I felt when I saw the sign at the Boston Copley Marriott’s second floor lounge area – a raised section that was the epitome of sophistication to a kid like me – that said in no uncertain terms, ‘No one under the age of 14 allowed after 8 PM.’ I think I was twelve or thirteen when I saw it, just out of reach, and from that moment forward all I wanted was to be older.
Things have changed over the years, and I figured there would come a day when I wished I was younger, but for the most part I don’t mind getting older. My friend Kevin remarked on FaceBook that I was one of the people he worried most about as far as the aging process went, and on social media and this blog it makes some sense. Visuals and superficial stuff has always been very important to the online version I present to the world. Reality, thankfully, is much different from that, however, and I’ve happily grown into the latter half of my 40’s without much chagrin or angst.
Here’s a song sung by the incomparable Catherine Russell that would have been perfectly at home in the elegant lounge that didn’t permit anyone under fourteen (and let’s face it, I’d be more than happy to see that sign today). Things do change…
As for myself, and currently ensconced well within middle-age, with gray and silver hair streaming out of my head, wrinkles crinkling up the corners of my eyes, and rings like the inside of a tree trunk lining my neck, I find myself more amused and interested by the way the body ages than dismayed or resistant to it.
Might this be wishful thinking on my part, and an effort to will myself into easy acceptance? Perhaps there’s some of that. I miss the way youth allowed the body so much more forgiveness and room for errors. I miss not having to take blood pressure pills and being able to eat anything and everything in sight and not going up a size in pants the next month. I miss not seeing the world without bifocals and contacts and reading glasses. But in other ways I’m a bit healthier and better. I don’t miss being hungover or blurry from a night of too much drinking. I don’t miss the mental uncertainty of being young and dumb. I don’t miss the lactose intolerance of childhood or the debilitating allergies of my teens. The body learns and grows and progresses in ways good and bad.
