It’s not about age or getting old. It’s about being and that with a qualifier: being content, not an unexplainable, grudging acceptance of some mystifying “lot” in life. Maybe there’s something wrong with my brain because I just don’t understand women who approach their thirties and forties and fifties with such fear and loathing and repetitively expressed angst. Growing older is inevitable. Complaining about it is like complaining about the weather– what can you do about it? Growing older is not synonymous with getting old. That’s something else.
I’m fifty-one. I still feel almost exactly as I did when I was nineteen. I still love music, I still love to dance. I still love Lucy and scream “EEE—yaba-daba-dooo!” at quittin’ time on Fridays. Bugs Bunny cartoons (not so much the ’60’s Toons) still make me laugh out loud. I still love Hershey’s Nuggets with Merlot. I still burst pimples and buy tampons.
I still wear A-line, knee length skirts with heels to show off my legs. I look in the mirror and I still think to myself ‘I still look good!’ I still get embarrassed and made to feel humiliated. Mean people still hurt my feelings and great ones are a balm to my soul. I still laugh, I cry. I experience joy, I suffer shame. I have good days and then there are the bad, but most of all I am grateful for a mostly good life, good health, a good meal, and a good condition of the heart.
Eighteen years a single mom, I successfully reared a son who does not drink (to excess), smoke, do drugs (not even behind my back; he does not lead a double life), mistreat women, has no children (he’s 24) or has had any trouble with the law. He works hard, has a good job, is well liked and respected by his colleagues and peers. He is a good son and a good man. He pays his bills and his taxes and is a good citizen in our land. I am enormously proud of him and I make certain he knows it. I won the parent lottery when I got him but our journey wasn’t easy. I don’t feel alienated from him because I’m fifty-one. I don’t feel old or misunderstood or cast off.
I’m still learning and growing, and experimenting and passing and failing and trying new things. I’m blogging. I’m starting new businesses, meeting new people, making new friends. I’m letting go of the things behind and stretching forward toward the things ahead* with conviction, hope, and a trembling optimism.
My experience and rapt attention to the things that have gone on in the world during my lifetime have settled upon me like a baby’s blue blankie. I feel confident, powerful, intellectually ambidextrous, valuable and secure. I feel good, not old. I am good. I’m OK!
So Patsy if yer lissnin’*, please… Quit’cher bitchin’! There’s never going to be enough time, or money to do all the things you want or think you want to do. We don’t live forever. We’re not Mork from the planet Ork. Life does not get stuck in reverse. It only keeps advancing forward.
Stop whinning and complaining and comparing yourselves with men. Stop envying them. It’s better, (if, of course, you’re predisposed that way), to enjoy them. Enjoy yourselves. Your life– your real life is only as short (or as meaningless, or unaccomplished, or empty, or scary, or loveless or failed) as you decide it is.
When you try your best but you don’t succeed When you get what you want but not what you need When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep Stuck in reverse And the tears come streaming down your face When you lose something you can’t replace When you love someone but it goes to waste Could it be worse Lights will guide you home And ignite your bones And I will try to fix youWhen you’re too in love to let it go But if you never try you’ll never know Just what you’re worth Lights will guide you home And ignite your bones And I will try to fix you Tears stream down your face When you lose something you cannot replace Tears stream down your face a lot Tears stream down your face I promise you I will learn from my mistakes Tears stream down your face a lot Lights will guide you home And ignite your bones And I will try to fix you
From high up above or down below
Chris Martin/Coldplay
*Coal Miner’s Daughter 
