Waking up with a throat on fire, and a new regime of physical therapy exercises to be executed every three hours, I found myself feeling all of my forty-one years, and then some. The exercises required warming my back first with a heating pad (hello 90) and the sore throat required some popsicles (hello 5). Somewhere in between them was the height of my middle age. We are here, for better or worse.
I’ve felt like an old soul since I was a little kid, yet the older I get, the younger I feel – mentally that is. Physically I feel the years, the decades. They show in my hair, my laugh lines, the furrow in my brow that doesn’t quite melt away the same way it once did. Aging doesn’t bother me, but the way the body begins its slow decline does. I’m coming around to the fact that no one is immune, and that I may need to modify what I eat and how I exercise, and take steps to improve both if I’m to have a full life. That’s a sobering thought, but one perfectly in line when you’re about halfway between 5 and 90.