Not a Numbers Girl

What an interesting week. My mother told me the other day that for the first time she felt old. She is 84 and rounding the corner toward 85. My mother lives in a retirement community and she frequently speaks of how cute the "little old ladies" are that amble around the hallways, offer up their free unsolicited advice, or just come knocking on her door to say hello. See, my mother is a little old lady and a really cute one, she just doesn't want to admit it. Nor do I, because if I admit my mother's age, then I have to think about my own and I've decided I'm not a numbers girl. I compartmentalize my life as a series of situational life circumstances and as I am looking at the fact that I have more years behind me than in front of me, I think about how age in the form of numbers has such significance. When you're born, you're judged first in hours, then days, then weeks and somewhere you become measured in months. Then somehow, according to a busy mother friend of mine, the time changes around twenty four months of age to two years. Then you can't wait to be five so you can go to kindergarten, then 10 because you're in the double digits, then twelve because that seems like life is moving along. Then you can't wait to be sixteen so you can drive, twenty one so you can legally drink alcohol. Then things start sobering up faster than you did on your twenty first birthday. You are looking at 30. Then 35, then the "BIG 4-0." Then society looks at it as downhill from there. There are boatloads of expectations that go along with being 40. That you will be settled, you will be married, you will have children that are looking forward to the same milestones you did. Sometimes life doesn't always turn out the way you thought it would, or sometimes the path you are intended to take is different than you dreamed when you were younger. When I was younger, I envisioned my life so differently than how it has turned out. The twists and turns have been devastating, uplifting, excruciating, exhilarating, and now I realize that the journey has been the life, not the other way around. The height of my joy is only matched by the depths of my sorrows, and it is quite a ride. I'm not measured by numbers, and I refuse to look at my life expectancy in years. My life is measured in experiences. In the amount of joy I can suck out of a given time frame. The pleasure I have on the plate before me. My life is just beginning. I am gloriously alive and that is all that matters. So the lesson for me today is that I love my body more than numbers...but for the record, I'm 660 months old...
XO,
Karen