Yesterday on the way home from her birthday party, Magoo asked me if I was ever going to have a big birthday party with my friends. I told her probably not. “Grown ups,” I said, “have more fun watching their kids do fun things than they do doing fun things for themselves.” I’m not sure she quite got it, but it satisfied her enough that she went back looking through her birthday loot.
I’m 36. I’m sure there are elderly people somewhere looking at TJ and I and talking about the days when they were “kids,” but to most people, we aren’t very young. To a lot of people, in fact, we are really old.
And I love that.
I love going to people’s weddings, sharing in their fun, and then coming home with my husband whom I’ve been with for fifteen years now. I love thinking that I’ve had twenty years of driving experience. I love going to college graduation parties and rejoicing in the graduate’s future and then coming home to a life that has a clear (albeit changeable) direction.
I love that I no longer have to worry about what I want to be when I grow up. I love that if I were to go back into the workforce today that I am prepared and ready and confident. I love that on a Saturday afternoon, I might have to do some errands and take my kids places and clean the house, but I don’t have to do homework and write papers and study for tests. I love that, imperfect though they may have been, that my decisions led me to this very place right here, imperfect though it may sometimes be.
I love that I’m secure enough in myself that I realize when someone is speaking with disrespect. I am very happy that this disturbs me even if I’m not secure enough yet to address it. I’m happy that I am learning to respect my own opinions and ways of doing things and that I can accept that others have different opinions and different ways and that we are all okay. I am glad that I am slowly learning how to be okay with not having to ask permission to be who I am.
I am glad that I am here, in this writing space, being me, sharing me, and only about half the time freaking out about what people will think of me.
And I’m glad that I can have conversations with Magoo like I did where I can say in all total and sincere honesty that I find more joy in the joy of my little people than I do in my own. That I have lived my life and experienced so much, and now I can sit back and help them do the same, and hopefully one day thirty years from now, I will be able to sit back and watch them watching their own little ones grow.
Sometimes life is just really awesome.
We don’t live in a society that makes people feel good about themselves often. Everywhere we look, we are confronted with images of people being perfect — looking perfect, thinking perfect, speaking perfect, dressing perfect. And it’s hard not to fall prey to that. I still fall prey more often than not. But the great thing about age is that you start to see more and more of the world. You meet new and more varied people and you come into contact with so many different lifestyles, and you start to realize that there isn’t just one way. You start to learn that the ones who seem the most perfect often feel the least perfect. You start to learn that what is authentic is so much more important than what is shiny.
And so today I raise my glass (of milk) to being old and loving it. Hopefully the best is yet to come.
I do have to say though, that I am glad I’m not as old as TJ. Because man, he is really, REALLY old.