Monday, April 28, 2008
Another year....
It is such a cliche, but I am at a loss for any other way to express it.
Time is moving way too fast.
In a few hours from now, around 12:30 am, April 29, the clock will be at the hour of my birth, which happened fifty-seven years ago. It is not possible that it has been an entire year since I posted that picture to the right.
That's my favorite picture of me. She's a goofy kid who turned into a goofy adult and is now a goofy geezer. I found it in my father's things when we cleaned out his apartment last year.
This past year's been kind of a tough one. A year I don't want to repeat - ever. I'm glad to report, however, that right at this moment I'm feeling better than I have in a very long time.
Today at work during my weekly "relief" receptionist hour, a woman came in who was my age. I know that because part of the process in this office is to validate ID - license and social security card, please.
She looked fifty-seven. She looked like a senior citizen. I felt a pang in my stomach. Do I look like her fifty-seven? Must I accept that I've now passed the threshold and entered fully into senior-hood?
I'm not an overly vain person. My looks aren't that important to me (save for a brief period of girly-ness a while back that resulted in bras and painted toe-nails... I got over that, thank goodness...) ... but, I am concerned about looking old before I'm ready (as if one can ever be ready).
I am fortunate that my parents endowed me with a genetic framework that has kept me younger looking than my actual years most of my life. But, that fountain of youth isn't going to last forever - and it isn't.
The face is sagging, among other things. Wrinkles are increasing and deepening. Gray hair is hiding under the dye job.
I just don't feel it, though. I am way more immature than my years would suggest. Yet I wonder if I'm not breaking some unwritten rule somewhere that says at some point you have to be your age. I feel that I have to be careful not to end up a fool.
These are things that swirl through my thoughts more frequently these days but that I, for the most part, have been successful at ignoring. In spite of my fits of conern, I'm optimistic that, no matter how wrinkly or gray I get, I will avoid becoming an old fuddy duddy.
I may take more naps as time goes on, but I fully intend to rock on as long as this body lets me.
And I have to tell ya' - I was encouraged when I renewed my drivers license today. The agent had to call to get clearance to override the new facial recognition dealio.
My new picture had to be taken with glasses off and the machine couldn't match my face to the old picture. When she called to get the clearance, it almost wasn't granted. The person on the other end of the phone said the old pic and the new pic were two different people.
"Her hair is blonder, there're no glasses and she's smiling."
Finally, it was resolved and I went on my way with my new license. One, as a matter of fact, I don't mind showing. The first license picture I've ever liked. Just as much as I love that goofy kid in the picture above, I'm really liking the goofy geezer in the picture below.
Time is moving way too fast.
In a few hours from now, around 12:30 am, April 29, the clock will be at the hour of my birth, which happened fifty-seven years ago. It is not possible that it has been an entire year since I posted that picture to the right.That's my favorite picture of me. She's a goofy kid who turned into a goofy adult and is now a goofy geezer. I found it in my father's things when we cleaned out his apartment last year.
This past year's been kind of a tough one. A year I don't want to repeat - ever. I'm glad to report, however, that right at this moment I'm feeling better than I have in a very long time.
Today at work during my weekly "relief" receptionist hour, a woman came in who was my age. I know that because part of the process in this office is to validate ID - license and social security card, please.
She looked fifty-seven. She looked like a senior citizen. I felt a pang in my stomach. Do I look like her fifty-seven? Must I accept that I've now passed the threshold and entered fully into senior-hood?
I'm not an overly vain person. My looks aren't that important to me (save for a brief period of girly-ness a while back that resulted in bras and painted toe-nails... I got over that, thank goodness...) ... but, I am concerned about looking old before I'm ready (as if one can ever be ready).
I am fortunate that my parents endowed me with a genetic framework that has kept me younger looking than my actual years most of my life. But, that fountain of youth isn't going to last forever - and it isn't.
The face is sagging, among other things. Wrinkles are increasing and deepening. Gray hair is hiding under the dye job.
I just don't feel it, though. I am way more immature than my years would suggest. Yet I wonder if I'm not breaking some unwritten rule somewhere that says at some point you have to be your age. I feel that I have to be careful not to end up a fool.
These are things that swirl through my thoughts more frequently these days but that I, for the most part, have been successful at ignoring. In spite of my fits of conern, I'm optimistic that, no matter how wrinkly or gray I get, I will avoid becoming an old fuddy duddy.
I may take more naps as time goes on, but I fully intend to rock on as long as this body lets me.
And I have to tell ya' - I was encouraged when I renewed my drivers license today. The agent had to call to get clearance to override the new facial recognition dealio.
My new picture had to be taken with glasses off and the machine couldn't match my face to the old picture. When she called to get the clearance, it almost wasn't granted. The person on the other end of the phone said the old pic and the new pic were two different people.
"Her hair is blonder, there're no glasses and she's smiling."
Finally, it was resolved and I went on my way with my new license. One, as a matter of fact, I don't mind showing. The first license picture I've ever liked. Just as much as I love that goofy kid in the picture above, I'm really liking the goofy geezer in the picture below.
Labels: aging, Birthdays, staying young
Posted at 4:12 PM | |
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Busy, busy, busy
That kid to the left there has just completed 56 years on this planet. It's one of those "nondescript" birthdays - not a decade or decade and a half milestone, but it feels kinda like it ought to be a major one.That's because it's got me thinking about sex. Yes, sex.
Or, more precisely, the last time I engaged in that bit of pleasure with another person. And I'm a little worried. Not so much because it's been a shocking* while, but because the memory of the last time isn't that great.
The guy was an internet acquaintance who'd e-mailed me because I had listed quantum physics as an interest in my AOL profile. After engaging in several e-mails and a few AOL chats we got the nerve to exchange a phone call or two and then decided we needed to meet.
He was pretty brave and made the trip to Oklahoma from Iowa, opting for a hotel. But he only stayed there one night. There was a bit of a physical spark and we pursued our impulses upon returning from an afternoon at the zoo. There weren't exactly any fireworks, per se, but there was quite a loud siren. A tornado warning siren, to be precise. Timed perfectly to... well, you can guess.
About a month later, over the fourth of July holiday, I trekked to Iowa to visit him. There were no fireworks then, either. Both literally and figuratively. Somehow we managed to miss Independence Day fireworks. We did have a moon, though. Which was bright and vivid as viewed each night from his tree house... The sex, though, was perfunctory. We weren't exactly clicking on other levels either, so when I left Iowa, we knew that was it.
I'm not keen on having that as my last memory of sex if it is to be my fate never to roll naked with another person for the rest of my life... or if I were to be hit by a bus next week. I am able to reach back a little farther, though, to a time when there was some damn fine sex going on - you know that scene on the train when Diane Lane is thinking about the illicit sex she's just had in Unfaithful?- it was that good. But doesn't long term memory get shakier with age?
See my problem here?
Now one might suggest I go for a grab and bag, but that's not how I roll. At least... not now. I am fascinated by the evolution of the casual sex my generation propagated, though. I hear terms today like "friend-sex," "fuck buddy," "cuddle pal" and such. Even anonymous sex. It can certainly fuel some intriguing fantasies. However, my generation ultimately discovered, I believe, that casual sex is an oxymoron. There's nothing casual about it.
So that is what I'm pondering on on this, the 29th of April 2007, the day of my 56th birthday, and perhaps pining for a special, er, um kind of package to come knocking on my door?
Oh, well. I guess I'll just have to be happy with a fresh set of double A batteries and....
Sigh.
------
*I'm not going to say how long - each person has their own measure of "shockingly" long - for some it's a week, others months... or a couple of years... or a decade... or whatever... so, I'm not going to say and don't ask.
Posted at 2:30 AM | |
