How Old Are You?

It seems like a simple, mathematical equation to me - but I keep being told that I'm wrong about it.

In figuring out where I think that "middle age" begins and ends, it seems to me that, well, it should be in the middle of an expected lifespan. Assuming that you'll have thirds labeled "young," "middle aged," and "senior citizen," you'd take an expected lifespan and divide it into 3 parts. Obviously, there are other divisions in those thirds - everything from newborn, infant, toddler to teen to retiree. Still, if you have 3 major categories - young, middle, old - you have 3 equal parts. Follow me so far?

So, I decided on a projected lifespan of 90. It's in most genetic ballparks, and divides easily in thirds. Therefore, my divisions go: young, 0 to 30; middle aged, 30 to 60; and senior citizen, old person, however you want to label the final third, 60 to 90.

I started referring to myself as "middle aged" at 30.

People are routinely horrified by this.

Fairly typical is the conversation I had with friends; a small group, all in their early 30s. They looked at me as though I had just advocated human sacrifice in order to have a plentiful harvest. "NO," one said. "NO. I am young!"

"Well, where does middle age start?" I asked. They were fairly universal in their answer: "40."

"To what?" I wanted to know.

"What do you mean?"

"If it starts at 40, where does it end? It can't just be the one year."

This resulted in a bit of hemming and hawing, but the consensus seemed to be, "Retirement age?"

Well, that's pretty vague. The American Association of Retired Persons accepts members as soon as they've hit their 50th birthday. In my dad's day, 55 was the standard retirement age. That age is now 65. I have a friend who just retired at 54, but went on to take a new job, hoping to retire from it in 25 or 30 years.

"So, you figure people will live as long after they're retired as they did before they hit middle age? You figure that the average lifespan is over 100?" Even this question leaves out the problem of assuming that "middle age" is a shorter time period than youth or old age. If any period were to be disproportionately small, it would be youth. Babyhood, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood are all very short periods of time. It seems to me that the middle, where people do most of their living, working, marrying, raising children, would be the largest portion if life were divided unevenly.

Think about movies, books, any story: you have a beginning, where you meet the characters and set up the situations. You have an end where the story gets wrapped up. Where does most of the action take place? In the middle. If the life divisions are unequal, the middle should not be the smallest.

I pointed that out - a 40 year portion and a 15 year portion and a, what, 20 year portion does not work.

Now the group went from finding me odd to taking offense. Ignoring the mathematical proportions, people fell back on insisting, "There's no way that 30 is middle age!"

The problem here is how people feel about the words "middle age." Many people consider them to be synonymous with unattractive, clueless about fashion, music, and popular culture, boring, and losing their health. This is not the case - this has never been the definition of this term. It means just what it says, the center part of your life.

This aversion to the term, as though it means something negative, reminds me of people's reactions when I use the word "fat" to describe myself. They either say, "Oh, you're not fat!" or, "You're not that fat." Listen, folks, "fat" is not a value judgement. It does not mean lazy, gluttonous, unattractive, or anything else except having an abundance of fat cells. I certainly have them. This does not indicate anything negative about me, any more than my hair color does. When I use the word to describe myself, it doesn't mean that I'm unhappy, or have low self esteem. (It certainly does not mean that I want you to disagree with me.)

"Old" is not a derogatory term, either. I spent most of my younger years saying, "I have no patience with people who feel 'old' at anything less than 70." My dad was 56 when I was born. I learned to spell "retired" in first grade. The idea that old is bad, and that "old" will always be older than you are, annoys me, deeply.

My kids, though, started calling me "old" when I was in my 30s. And not just me; one of my daughters once reduced a dinner party to laughter by referring to a photo of a bikini clad model as "that old lady." I was never ruffled; I claimed it. (I never had a problem being called "ma'am," either.) Keep in mind, when I was 35, I had a 14 year old and a 15 year old, and they were certain that I was ancient and out of touch, with no relevant experience or perspective. If they wanted to call me "old," I'd take it. I'll wear that title, proudly.

The alternative to being old is dying young; never my life's goal.

For years, any time I'd say, "my grandnephew," my son would say, "Who?" I'd say, again, "Andrew. His mother is my niece." And my son would say, "Geez, you're old!" ruffled by the thought that I had a "grand-" anything.

I once had someone pull me aside after I'd said something like, "Well, you know, when you get to be my age," to inform me that I was upsetting another woman in the group. "She's the same age you are, and she doesn't feel old." SIGH. If she's my age, she should be old enough to know that she's not a kid anymore, and that's a good thing. Good heavens, who would ever want to spend their life trapped in adolescence? Adolescents are a stew of hormones, lack of perspective, and angst. It's not their "fault," or a fault at all, but it is a biological and sociological fact, and I would never want to spend any longer than biology dictated that I had to  spend in adolescence.

This is why I do not understand the (fairly new) belief, held by a significant number of people, that "adolescence lasts until you're 30." Oh, good gravy, no. It does not and should not.

One of my dearest friends insists, "No one under the age of 30 should make any important or lasting decisions. They're just not ready." I am not the target audience for this idea. I think that too many people are irresponsible and immature long past when biology would be an excuse. I am, of course, aware that our brains are not done forming until roughly age 25, but that's exactly why I think that mature, responsible behavior should be routine by then. It makes no sense to assume that a person will become more capable and responsible by encouraging prolonged adolescence. We're aware that toddlers do not have fully functioning brains or nervous systems, but we start expecting them to use the toilet, take turns, wait, and other unnatural, uncomfortable things while they're toddlers. We don't say, "Oh, well, this is too tough for them - we'll wait until they're older and more mature. Then it won't be such a struggle." We are aware that the individual and society both benefit if they learn those skills precisely when it is difficult and unnatural.

I've been told that it's futile to expect young adults - let's say 18 to 30 - to be mature, that it puts "too much pressure" on them, and will cause psychological problems. I don't think so. I became very annoyed during the 2014 Winter Olympics, when skier David Wise was described by an announcer as having "an alternative lifestyle" for being married and a father in his 20s. I wrote this: "I mean, if you heard that someone wasn't walking, or reading, or driving, or holding a job, far (in fact, years) past the age that they should be mentally and physically capable, do you think, 'Everyone else should slow down and do it the same way, instead of trying to achieve,' or do you think, 'They should get some pretty intensive counseling and intervention in order to catch up'? In theory, a healthy 5 year old who still crawled everywhere would just be exercising prudence, right, taking all those extra years to mature? Maybe he'll fall less often when he does start walking, right?" ("The Example of an Olympian")

Seriously, how is it that we think that people are mature enough to drive, vote, join the military and go to war, buy a gun, consume alcohol, teach school, be an attorney or a doctor in their 20s, but NOT mature enough to get married or have children?

This is usually when someone says to me (either seriously or facetiously), "Well, we can't all be you." I got married at 20, had 2 babies in the next 2 years, had my first mortgage at 21. I do not think that everyone should be me, but neither do I think that everyone should fear and avoid responsibility, either. Everyone should have the choice to do what I did. I could have studied law, or medicine, or painting, or sculpting, but I didn't - not because I wasn't capable, or mature, but because that wasn't what I wanted to do. If I'd said, "Oh, geez, I really want to be a lawyer, I still hope that I can be a lawyer one day, but I'm just not capable of handling the study and the rigor and the expectations yet! I'll continue doing the same things I did as a kid, in the hopes that, in the future, I'll feel differently and therefore act differently," well, people would have had really choice and unflattering things to say to (and about) me. But when you switch the word "lawyer" for "spouse" or "parent," so many people say, "Good for you! That's the way it should be!" NO. If you decide not to do any particular thing, that's good, that's OK. You should have the option of choosing between many different paths. If you are just not mature yet, well, you'd better be working hard on maturing, and not just counting on maturity to show up because you've waited a long time. If you don't trust your own judgement, that's also an issue.

 I mean, it doesn't seem to me to be a difficult concept, the idea that everyone should be mature enough to make any available choice, not that they should be forced into a single choice - but people frequently tell me that I'm saying that kids should limit themselves. On the contrary - I want them to expand their idea of the available choices. Instead, they hear from society that, for instance, getting married and having a family will ruin their lives and kill their education. That makes no sense to me. I know so very many people like my friend J, who just graduated from medical school and passed his board exams at 30, (after serving a 2 year church mission at 19), while his wife is expecting their third child.

One of my children has been telling me since she was a teen that "nobody is ready to choose a spouse in their teens and early 20s," and "everyone feels like a kid at least into their 30s." Yet, she married someone she met at 19, and dated exclusively, from that time. (She says they've been "officially" together since she was 20.) I find the attitude of, "do as I say, not as I do," and "most people aren't able to do this, but I was," to be far more puzzling and troubling than my stance of, "I'm not that special; this isn't that difficult."

It also annoys me when people say, "Sure, I chose my spouse/school/profession then, but I didn't really commit to them/it for years" as though that's a good thing. I also get very tired of, "Oh, I'm glad I didn't: 1: marry my first boy/girlfriend, 2. keep my first major, 3. stay in my first profession" as a way to negate the idea that young people should be capable of big decisions. Whether or not the average human should be capable of maturity and whether or not you personally adjusted your course are not the same thing.

Neither is the simple math indicating how long you've been alive a negative judgement.

My oldest child turned 30 last year; my second turns 30 this year. Yes, I consider them to be middle aged. Yes, they disagree with me, just like they did when they turned 18 and I referred to them as adults. That doesn't change the fact that, statistically, the first third of their lives are over. And that assumes a lifespan of 90, and I haven't yet found anyone in our family tree who's made it to 90. 80 would be a more accurate prediction, I think. I, personally, am past the age at which AARP will take me as a member, closing in on that last third of my life, and I do not find this to be a negative or worrisome thing.

"Middle aged" and/or "old" does not mean irrelevant, clueless, in poor health, unattractive, one foot in the grave, or anything else negative! It means that you have experience and perspective. Embrace it! I never realized how truly youth obsessed our current culture is until I started watching the mere words cause panic. It's logic. It's math. And it's OK! Really.

Instructions

I've started giving my children instructions that they probably find odd. It's just that, after watching a grandmother with Alzheimer's, losing my parents, and watching my siblings weather a heart attack, bypass surgery and a pacemaker, I've become aware that there are things that your family may need to know, but you might not have thought to tell them.

For instance, I informed my children that "Circle of Life" and "The Rainbow Connection" need to be played at my funeral. "I don't care who might tell you that it's inappropriate," I told them. "I don't care if it's recorded, or if you sing it live, if it's the prelude music, or how you do it. " They just need to be played.

I started thinking, though, about what people would need to know if I was incapacitated. If I were to become senile, especially if I was nonverbal, the irony is that those most capable of coping with me would all have passed away. I'm guessing that I'd need roughly the same things I needed as a child, but no one who remembered my childhood would be available.

I mean, the legal stuff will be spelled out in legal papers, I'm sure. But what about all the other stuff, the nitty gritty of calming me down and getting me to bed and all that sort of thing?

So, I've started giving my kids pointers.

"I know, Mom. Get you a VW van." This is true. If I'm suffering from any kind of dementia, drive me around in a VW van. It doesn't matter where we go. As long as it sounds and smells like a Volkswagen, I'll be happy. Bonus points if the van is yellow and white. (And hey, if I'm still perfectly capable, it still won't hurt to get me a van.)

So, here's some more of my best advice. I'm being very serious here - no attempt to play it for laughs. This is seriously what will  help, if I'm incapacitated and you can't ask me.

If you ever get complaints from the nursing home staff that I'm wandering outside at night, it's because I want to sleep outside. They'll balk, but try to convince them to let me sleep outside, at least for a few hours, if the weather is good. Volunteer to stay with me, if you have to.

I've had long hair for my entire life, so this request might seem odd. If I need assistance with basic tasks - eating, getting dressed - I'm telling you, cut the hair. All of it. Cut it to about 2 inches long, all over my head. TRUST ME.

I have never liked having my hair brushed or styled. Never. I was a feral small child, resisting any attempt to brush or comb my hair. It seriously went a week or more without brushing. Even now, I brush it once a day, and that's it. Even as a teen, I hated letting others style my hair. I deeply dislike elaborate styles, or letting someone handle my hair. I just know that some sweet, well meaning nurse or granddaughter would sit and brush my hair, thinking I'd like it, and I'd do something hideously inappropriate, like bite her. It's not about whether or not they're gentle; I hate it anyway.

Plus, I cannot stand hair on my neck when I sleep. I sleep with my hair in a ridiculous whale spout ponytail, so it will be off my neck in my sleep. If I'm not capable of doing this myself, it will not go well for anyone.

If I'm ever bedridden, or needing help with ordinary tasks, CUT THE HAIR ALL OFF. I realize that this will be deeply unflattering. With my thinning hair and round face, I'll probably look like a victim of radiation poisoning. I do not care. If you are afraid that I will frighten my descendants, put a hat or a scarf on me before I have visitors or get photos taken.

TAKE ME OUTSIDE AT LEAST ONCE A DAY. I cannot overstate this. Even if I'm wheelchair bound, and the most exotic place available is a tiny courtyard with a single tree and some potted plants, take me there. I need to feel fresh air. I need to watch insects and birds. If there's somewhere with any kind of water, take me there. I may just sit and stare at it, but trust me, that will make me happy. If I've regressed to my childhood self, I may want to throw endless rocks in the water, just to hear the splash. Fountains are OK; streams, even tiny ones, are better, as are lakes and ponds and rivers. Anywhere that smells of sagebrush or pine is good, as well.

Manicures and pedicures are not my thing. I'll barely let you trim my nails. Don't waste your time trying to do anything else to them.

I need reading material. Electronic reading is OK, but I do better with paper. Make sure that I have actual, physical books and magazines. I will reread old ones for a long time, but I will get unruly without reading material. If it's gotten to the point that I can't read, magazines with big, glossy photos of animals and beautiful places - think National Geographic - will be invaluable.

I may want an animal to take care of; I may even forget that I'm allergic to fur, or insist that I don't care. Do us all a favor and get me stuffed animals, and talk to me about "taking care" of my animals. Trust me.

Art supplies are a must. Simple crafts will keep me happy for hours. Taking me out to gather pinecones, moss, branches and rocks to use in crafts will make me equally happy.

Even if I have lost the ability to write, give me paper and pens.

If I can handle it even a little, give me a camera.

Don't expect me to have long phone conversations. It doesn't mean that I don't love the callers, because I do.

Play Ed Ames music. Often.

Let me watch vintage Disney anything as often as feasible.

Both of my parents were healthy, happy and in their own home, unassisted, until the days they died unexpectedly. I hope that's some sort of family karma that I can cash in, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared for the alternative.

Backwards

I think that I have some sort of Benjamin Button thing happening. Heaven knows that I'm not looking any younger, and I've never felt young, but I seem to be experiencing a lot of things backwards.

As a kid and a teen, I deeply resented the stereotype that kids felt immortal and invincible. I never felt either. I was always the kid saying, "But someone could get hurt!" I was not a risk taker or a thrill seeker. I was acutely aware that death, dismemberment, pain or scarring were very real possibilities. I worried, I fretted, I avoided risk and danger as best I could. I've never "bailed out" of swings or jumped off of a diving board. (Really.)

Describing my behavior as a child to my middle daughter recently elicited The Look and the verdict, "So you were a wet blanket." The wettest, thank you very much.

Said child, in contrast, had no fear as a child. None. I remember clearly having to repeatedly grab the back of her swimsuit and haul her into the shallows at age 2, because she'd just keep walking into the water, even after it was over her head. Not just once, mind you, but over and over. It never occurred to her, in any situation, that she might get hurt or experience an unpleasant outcome. She looked at people as though they were crazy or unintelligible if they warned her. When she did get hurt, she brushed it off like Monty Python's Black Knight - "It's only a flesh wound."

It wasn't until her 20s that it started occurring to her that she might get hurt, and that hurt was bad. Facing situations that she'd never given a second thought to suddenly had her realizing, "Someone could get hurt." Slowly, she noticed that situations caused her worry, and that she was being more cautious.

"This is how the other half lives," I told her. "Welcome to adulthood."

"I hate it! How do people function like this?" she wanted to know.

I, on the other hand, am slowly growing into feelings of invincibility.

More and more, I find myself mentally spreading my arms and saying, "Bring it on. I've got this." Fear of water? I'll go in a submarine, and then across the Atlantic on a ship. Fear of being disliked? Recently I ran into a kid I'd gone to high school with, a kid who was so much cooler than I was that I spent all of high school awed and intimidated. I may have spoken three sentences to this kid during the entire four years we went to school together. Now that I'm much older, twice my high school weight and going gray (and, unfortunately, bald), what did I do? Run up and say hello, then hug him/her.

Kids are supposed to be the dreamy ones, too, setting ridiculous life goals like, "marry a prince." I was such a practical kid. My goals were things like, "be able to afford groceries." I was clear that I could choose any one of hundreds of paths through life, could be a doctor or teacher or lawyer or painter - but I never imagined, or wanted, the usual things kids covet: obscene wealth, fame, privilege. I still don't, but now I see no barriers to pie-in-the-sky plans. If somebody had told me when I was 18 that they wanted to be something ridiculous and impractical, I would have given them the "It's really difficult to make it" speech, and meant it. Now, I'd give them the "Go for it!" speech, and mean it. Sure, it takes hard work and more than a little luck, but it's not impossible. Knock 'em dead, kid. You can do it.

As a kid, I was easy to psych out or intimidate. I know that there were times that I lost competitions just because I let the other guy(s) get to me. Not any more.

Children are supposed to be trusting; I had severe trust issues. OK, I still have some, and there's good reasons for them, but I no longer feel that I have to do everything, or that something is doomed to failure if multiple people have multiple jobs to do. I only have to do my job, my little part, and not worry, or even necessarily think about, anyone else's job. (Sometimes you carry The One Ring and sometimes you kill the Orcs - am I right?)

I never was young, and I never will be, but that's OK. I may have the best of both worlds.

Out of the Dark

I always figured that I'd pretty much breeze through the physical signs of aging. When a friend despaired to me that, "Heads don't automatically turn when I walk into a room anymore," it was all I could do not to snort. I did say, "Welcome to the real world!" Heads have never turned when I walk into a room. Not only do 99% of my male friends not see me as female, a good portion of my female friends don't, either. I am gender neutral. This is totally OK with me. It weeds out the shallow men who don't want to talk to you unless they're hoping to have sex with you, as well as the catty, plastic looking Barbie women who are afraid that ordinariness is contagious.

Gray hair and wrinkles? Pfffttt. I earned these. Besides, I have NO desire to look ridiculously artificial.

Weight gain terrified me at 15, annoyed me at 25, and has since dropped totally off my radar. (Save the comments about how, "I can tell." It is not my job to impress anyone.) I have never been on a diet or purchased a weight loss product. This makes me a distinct minority (and horrifies some folks); I can live with that.

Not being fashionable? Please! First, you don't generally miss what you never had. Second, trends are short lived, superficial, contradictory and driven by the need to 1. make somebody money and 2. feel superior. Being fashionable now means being out of fashion in the future; it's a never ending cycle. If you're me, you're still happily wearing pants you bought 10 years ago, and you have no 1980s MC Hammer pants in your past.

I watched my mother breeze through menopause like it was a total non event, and was glad I'd inherited her genes. I'm hoping I'll have the same luck.

I found myself in my teens and already planning for what I would do if arthritis hit. So far, it hasn't; so much for being prepared.

I was prepared for night blindness, I thought. I'd watched my mother and my older friends first stop driving distances at night, then stop driving after dark, period. I expected it to come on gradually, though, and probably after 50.

It hit without warning, in my late 30s, in the middle of a nighttime drive down a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere. I could not quite figure out what was happening. I had a sinus headache, the kind that pushes on the backs of your eyeballs, so I wondered if the congestion was bad enough to pinch off the optic nerves. I had never noticed any kind of trouble, strain or squinting, and suddenly I was unable to see, at 75 MPH.

If you've ever driven between Reno and Las Vegas on Highway 95, you know how much space is out there. You can go for hours between one stoplight towns. We'd left Reno when my husband left work, about 3:00 in the afternoon, hoping to make Vegas before we stopped for the night, on our way to Phoenix. We had a loooong way to go, and I couldn't see.

My husband was coming off seven days straight of 12 hour shifts, and had told us at 3 that he didn't feel up to driving. My oldest daughter was with us, but she hated driving our Suburban in town, in broad daylight. I couldn't imagine her tackling hours in the dark.

I kept slowing down until I was going about 45 MPH.  My husband would snap at me, "You can't go that slow! Someone will come up behind us and smash into us! You're going to kill us!" I'd snap back, "I can only see about 5 or 10 feet in front of me!"

Maddeningly, he'd say, "That's all you need to see!"

"At 75 miles an hour?"

"What's most important is what's directly in front of you. Do you think the road is going to disappear?" he asked. He never quite "got" my thought process until a couple of years later, after many similar conversations, when I asked, "When you walk into a familiar dark room, like our living room, do you run full speed through it, assuming that you'll know where everything is?" Then, it finally made some sense to him, but is still at odds with one of his firmest convictions, the idea that slowing down on a freeway or highway is unacceptable under all but the rarest and most extreme of circumstances. He's also sure that any kind of hesitation, or being unsure of anything while behind the wheel, is a perilous thing.

Making things worse was the constant stream of oncoming traffic, mostly semis. Cars passing in the opposite direction were aggravating, with their headlights starbursting in my field of vision, but in my Suburban, I am at almost the exact height of the headlights of semi trucks. Their lights were right in my eyes and obliterated my vision for about a full second, even when I kept my eyes fixed on the opposite side of the road, toward the shoulder on my side. A second doesn't sound like a very long time, until you count it out, saying, "one one thousand." Imagine that at highway speed, and you'll understand why it freaked me out.

Needless to say, my husband and I were both at our wits end on this particular drive.

When we hit the next town, we stopped for dinner and got a hotel room as well. None of the adults in the car felt capable of driving, and no one wanted to end up as roadkill.

I couldn't make up my mind on that trip whether this was a temporary or permanent thing. It seemed so sudden and so complete - I'd expected age related night blindness to sneak up on me.

It soon became clear, though, that this was my new reality. I can drive all right in town, where everything is lit, but forget highway driving after dark. My depth perception is also completely unreliable in the dark. I can't reliably recognize curbs, for instance. Pushing my elderly mother in a wheelchair at Disneyland, I ran the chair off the curb and dumped my mother out onto the ground, where the wheelchair fell on top of her. My middle daughter stepped in - "Give Grandma to me! Just give her to me!" I was relieved of further wheelchair duty as soon as dusk approached every day for the rest of the trip.

Mostly, I function without falling or wreaking havoc. I run my hands along a lot of walls, though.

I didn't think much about how I would cope backstage; it never really occurred to me that it might take some adjusting. I've spent pretty much my whole life onstage or backstage - it feels as comfortable as my own home. Then I found myself backstage in the dark on the world's largest indoor stage.

I was playing a chorus part in the Disney version of "Beauty and the Beast." I'd wanted to be Mrs. Potts, but hey, so had every other actress too old to play Belle. Anymore, I only take chorus parts if it's a show that I'm really passionate about, and this one fit the bill.

It was performed in the Grand Theater at Reno's Grand Sierra Resort. The stage was built back when the building was the MGM Grand, and it's impossible to describe how enormous it is if you haven't been on it. Normally, everyone has to whisper in dressing rooms, but these are so far back that you can hold normal conversations, and even laugh, and not be heard onstage. There's usually several rows of thick velvet drapes across the backstage area between the dressing area and the performance area. A 727 airplane, left over from the first show produced in the space ("Hello, Hollywood, Hello!") sits permanently backstage, along with a sweeping staircase, huge columns and other set pieces.

At several points, I had to cross behind the set, which has never been a big deal before. Suddenly, it was. I had to follow someone else, or creep along with my hands out in front of me like a ridiculous cartoon.

During one performance, I was making my way from stage right to stage left, headed eventually to the dressing room. I thought I knew where I was going, and I blundered into some of the ropes used to secure the drapes. This is a huge, huge no-no. I wasn't hurt, and I didn't goof anything up, but it underscored for me how much I could screw up by wandering around blind.

I put my hands out in front of me and crept along with tiny steps. The show had a huge cast, with performers as young as 8, and I nearly ran into one of the children in the cast. I apologized for my clumsiness. "I just ran into the ropes too," I whispered. "I can't see in the dark."

A tiny voice came out of the dark at about my chest level. "That's OK. You know me. Take my hand."

I couldn't see the offered hand, but I held mine out. A small hand grasped it, and led me gently through the dark. As soon as I could see the lights of the dressing area, my guide said, "I've gotta go," and scurried off back into the dark behind me.

I was almost absurdly grateful. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my benefactor and say, "Thank you," since I couldn't even be sure of the child's gender or age, much less identity. It was a kindness I couldn't repay in any way. We had a cast of over 100, many of them children or teens - it could have been any one of dozens of pint sized actors. It's a delight to work with responsible kids, just as it's a headache to deal with the opposite.

I'm usually pretty good at admitting when I'm out of my depth. Unfortunately, I'm more comfortable continuing to blunder along than I am asking for help. I don't feel I have anything to prove; I just dislike having to count on anyone else. "If you want something done right..." and all that jazz. (Yes, it is entirely possible that I have trust issues.)

Sometimes, the universe sends you unmistakable messages. This one reminded me that there are times when someone, even someone unlikely, will have my back. It reminded me that there are times when I'd be an idiot not to ask for help. It also reminded me that, occasionally, even if you don't ask for help, it will appear out of the dark and guide you through.

Sometimes, we all hear the equivalent of that small voice in the darkness, and we can take comfort knowing that we'll be well cared for (even if we really aren't sure by whom or how). As I get older, there will undoubtedly be many more of those moments, both literal and figurative. At those times, I'll think back to the gratitude I felt at that moment.

"It's OK. You know me. Take my hand."

Profound Alienation

Ah, the deep and profound alienation that comes from never having been young, yet living in a youth obsessed culture.

When I was nineteen, I had an argument with my friend Tim. Tim and I have always loved each other and rarely understood each other. I can't recall what he had either just done or was planning to do, but during a visit to my apartment, he said, "I'm going to be so embarrassed by this in a few years." Now, however, he was giddy about it.

You know the annoying kid who stands there yelling at all the other kids to get out of the makeshift go kart, rocket or whatever else they've built, because they'll hurt themselves? That was me. Tim was the kid who'd be building the vehicle and perching it on top of a steep hill.

"If you know it's stupid, and you know you're going to be embarrassed by it, why do it?" I wanted to know.

Tim looked at me as if the answer was obvious. "Because you have to do things; you have to experience life."

"And that means being stupid?

"At our age, yes."

That kind of thinking undid me. "That is the most ridiculous, age discriminatory thing I've ever heard!"

"Discriminatory? How do you figure?"

My turn to look as if things were self explanatory. "Because if someone older, like our parents, said that being our age meant being stupid, you'd be furious. You'd be telling them how wrong they were, and how hurtful it was to assume that we are idiots just because of our age. I know you would, because I've heard you do it."

"That's different."

"It is NO different!"

As usual, we argued for a few more minutes before we decided that it was just best to either change the subject or walk away. It was not the first, or the last, time we'd look at each other and say, "How can you think that?"

Yes, Tim is still my friend. I wasn't kidding when I said we loved each other anyway.

Meryl Streep, when asked how she felt about turning 40, once said, "Like I finally fit in my own skin. I was never young and fresh and dewy." I thought, "YEEESSSS!!!! Someone else 'gets' it."

As I finally started to fit into my own skin, my peers looked at themselves and said, "Who is this, and how did they get so old?" As 40 loomed, I wrote the following essay. I didn't say so, but I was wondering if there would come a time when people my age would understand me and vice versa. Five years later, I don't think so. I'll probably get in trouble in a few decades in my nursing home. Some man next to me will put in his teeth to say that he still feels like the high school quarterback, and in a fit of pique I'll beat him with my cane.

**************************

I'm sure that growing up the youngest in my family affected the way I feel about age. When you're constantly told that you're too little for this and too young for that, you wish in vain for the day when nobody says such things to you. It was especially frustrating when my older sister told me I was too young for something, and I pointed out that she hadn't thought so when she was my age. Her response was, "That's because I was too young and stupid to know the difference." It was maddening. She was all of 3 ½ years older than me – which, actually, was part of why she was so contentious. I wasn't seen as competition by my much older siblings, which was nice.

Part of it, too, was my parents' ages. On the day I was born, my dad was 56 and my mom was 36. My dad retired when I was eight months old. My mom turned 50 when I was in junior high. I knew they were older than my friends' parents; especially Dad. I just didn't think much of it. When I did, I usually found it odd that my friends' parents were so young. Sometimes, someone's grandparents would be younger than my dad, and I was puzzled. As a kid, your sense of "normal" comes from what you see every day. My dad was retired, my mom went to work, and I was an aunt in fifth grade. That was normal for me.

I'm sure my mom's attitude affected me, too. Mom is immensely practical and not given to vanity. Her age did not bother her, at least that I could see. She never lied about it, never complained about it, never obsessed over lines on her face. She didn't wear makeup or dye her hair. When her mother sent her Oil of Olay moisturizer ("because of that harsh, dry climate you live in,") she rolled her eyes and hardly ever used it. Near as I could tell, she didn't think about her age much. It simply existed, like the sky or the mountains.

Dad, on the other hand – Dad was terrified of aging. Part of that was fear of death. The thought of death absolutely undid him. He believed that your existence ended at death; no heaven, no pearly gates, no hell, no reincarnation – just nothing. That was unsettling in itself, but I don't think it wasn't the real issue. He'd been a coal miner, a railroad engineer, a police officer and a fireman – not exactly low risk occupations. When he talked about his years in law enforcement (which he seldom did in front of the kids, deeming the subject matter way over our heads), he would say that the two most dangerous calls were domestic disputes and bar brawls, with traffic stops being a very close second. Officers died all the time on those routine kinds of calls. He himself had had to face down men holding weapons on him. I learned about breaking bottles and using them as a makeshift knife from him. As a fire fighter, he'd been one of only two men willing to run into the burning jail and unlock the inmates so they could get out. I don't think risk or fear of dying was a really huge issue for most of his life. Of course, the older he got, the more it was, and I only knew him as a senior citizen.

The really big issue in aging for him was being helpless or irrelevant. He'd been a high school jock, a big man on campus. As an adult, he took on testosterone soaked jobs; jobs where he was physically strong and relied upon, jobs where he was often armed, jobs in which he alone was often the difference between life and death. Then, in his view very suddenly, he was no longer employed, overweight, slow, much weaker than he used to be. It scared him. Now instead of the rescuer, he fit the roll of victim. He began to fear that younger men could and would beat him up. He feared mugging and assault. He feared that someone would break into his home. He feared being seen as a target. He also feared that now he was just another old man, with no contribution to make. He felt invisible and unwanted. The depth of that feeling leads me to believe that as a young man he had been scornful and dismissive of weak old men, because he now thought that everyone saw him that way. He was angry and afraid.

In my mind, which always distills things down to their simplest (sometimes oversimplified) form, the equation looked like this: Mom + comfortable with aging = happy; Dad + fear of aging = sad. Now which, I internally asked, do I want to be? Simple.

On the other hand, being bright and analytical, I knew that getting older didn't mean that all my worries and problems would disappear. I knew that advancing grades meant harder work and more responsibility and that being an adult meant work, taxes and lots of bills. I was puzzled by kids who would say, "When I'm an adult, nobody can tell me what to do anymore! It's total freedom!" Oh, sure, I'd think; nobody can tell you what to do except for employers, lawmakers, law enforcement, the DMV, your landlord, your doctor, the city council, your bank… plus, you'll have to buy your own food and place to sleep." That sort of thinking made my adjustment to adulthood easy, but alienated me from my peers. I was accused of being "a downer," a pessimist, and raining on the parade. However much they like me, my peers have usually felt that I don't "get it."

I never felt invincible, either. I was convinced death was just waiting for me around the next corner, from the age of about four onward. A lot of that is my dad's influence, I'm sure. He feared that we'd die every time we so much as had the sniffles or stubbed a toe. Being rather sickly had an impact, too. Many of my childhood memories involve being home from school, swaddled in blankets and clutching a tissue box, watching game shows on TV. Strep throat was reliable companion that never gave up on me for too long. I also remember having garbage cans next to the couch and next to my bed, because we knew if I had to throw up, I wouldn't make it to the bathroom. I remember getting food stuck in my throat and being unable to breathe. Once, I started to lose consciousness. I actually prepared a will when I was about 16. I suppose if I'd been robust, and Dad would have been more relaxed, I'd have felt immortal. Maybe not. Anyway, I'd hear adults talk about how kids felt they'd never die, that they could never be hurt, and I'd think, Ha! Fat lot you know! Then I'd meet kids who felt like that, and wonder what the heck was wrong with them.

I formed most of my opinions about life by listening to what everyone around me had to say, sorting and sifting it by the number of people I heard it from and how reliable the source was. I hear that most people need to experience things. I'm a vicarious learner, I suppose. It's actually served me very well. I could look at other people – say, my older siblings – and decide what to do based on what worked for them. I rarely had to make their mistakes. Plenty of my own, sure, but not the same ones I'd watched someone else make. I was never an "it'll be different for me" person.

When I was a kid, most adults seemed genuinely startled by how old they were, and how old other people were. I'd wonder if they thought aging just happened to other people. It was like being surprised by the sunrise to me. It happened all the time. It looked predictable to me. Some of that was youthful arrogance, I'm sure, and some was simple math. Two years was a fifth of my life, but adults tended to own socks older than I was. Two years is no big deal when you're 50.

I have a harder time understanding it now that I'm the adult. I'll be 40 soon. My friends are now the ones being surprised by how old they are, and how old other people are. I still don't get it, and it's alienating. I never know who's going to bite my head off if I introduce them as "an old friend." (Yes, it's happened. "I'm not old!" they'll snap. What is the politically correct term, "friend of long standing?" I met most of the most vocal "not old" friends when I was a teen, so "childhood friend" isn't accurate. And I'm now old enough to have friends of two decades or so that I met as an adult. If I can't have "old friends," what can I have?)

No, actually, that's not the whole picture. People started being surprised by how old my kids were when I was barely out of my teens. Again, it made sense to me. I hadn't been a teenage mother or anything. I was twenty years old and married when my first child was born. I was twenty-one when my second was born. I had a husband, a mortgage, and a new mini-van we were making payments on. This was what I expected out of adulthood. Hadn't the older generation kept telling us when we were in our teens how we had to grow up and be responsible? Well, I was! Why did everyone find it so startling? Why did people, old and young, think I should be partying until I puked with other people my age? For crying out loud, kids are told all their lives to grow up, and now I was a grown up, and I was acting like it. For years, I didn't even wear jeans or T-shirts anymore. I dressed like a middle aged woman, wearing those ridiculous "housedresses" and elastic waist pants. Not together, at least.

I understood older people looking at me and my kids and being surprised. These were the same people who'd told me all my life how I was getting so BIG, it was just amazing, and could never remember if I was in second or fifth grade. I was unprepared for people my own age to find my life so foreign.

When we moved back to the town we'd grown up in, I went back to the theater company I'd worked with before. They were university based, but the company was open to the public, so there were people of a variety of ages. One day in a rehearsal or a meeting one woman kept bemoaning her twenty-fifth birthday. She felt so OLD, she howled repeatedly. "It's awful!" "A quarter of a century!" After a bit of this, I said, "Oh, knock it off. I have no patience with people who feel old any younger than seventy."

She was not fazed. "You're just mad because you're a lot older than me," she said smugly. I gave her a look I hope in hindsight wasn't too withering and said, truthfully, "I'm twenty-five years old." She paled.

"But, I thought you had, like, kids and everything," she stammered.

"I do," I told her.

"But I thought they were like, older and everything." She was looking more distraught all the time.

"My oldest is five." She looked even paler. It had not occurred to her that I could be her age AND have kids – especially ones who were "like, older and everything."

I could not understand why people my age were still being largely financially dependent on their mom and dad. Or why they were still moving from rental to rental, with roommates. Or still debating what they wanted to be when they grew up. When would they realize that they were grown up, and get with the program, I wondered. The older adults, the ones who'd wanted us all to grow up, seemed to be fine with this extended adolescence. Worse, they viewed my life with worry. It was maddening. They feared that any day, I'd decide that my youth had been wasted, dump the husband and kids, and backpack through Europe. OK, stranger things have happened, but anyone who's known me for longer than a few hours should know that the likelihood was slim to none. I hoped that getting older would fix this incessant worrying by others about my life.

It has, in a few small ways. Nobody tells me I'm too young to be having kids anymore. In larger ways, though, I'm still out of the loop. I snapped at a friend not too long ago, someone I've been close to since childhood. She was discussing the teenage tendency to drink too much, drive too fast, take too many drugs and the like. She made the mistake of saying, "Well, we all went through that stage." Had she not known me as a teen, I wouldn't have been offended, but she had. She'd known me since I was 12. I barked at her, "NO, we ALL did NOT." She did something else that maddens me, and sighed, saying, "Well, not you, but most of us did." I hate that. But I guess that anybody who started reading AARP literature at 25 can't quite expect to be the norm.