They say that age is just a number, but I’m not so sure. Try telling this to my 10 year old son, or his five year old (excuse me, five and a HALF) year old brother. Or to the almost sixteen year old in my office the other day who was counting the hours until her birthday, when she could get her learner’s permit. When you are young, getting older is a good thing. Your age determines whether you are “big enough” to get certain privileges, like biking to school on your own, or being able to drive, or staying up late to watch the Red Sox game. You have to be old enough. The older you are, the more you get to do. The older you are, the more you are in charge. Old is cool, when you’re young.
My kids have created this hierarchy in our family of authority based on age. They believe that my husband, who is five years older that I am, is the “boss” of the family, “because Daddy is the oldest;” I am next in the line of command, followed by my oldest and then my youngest, who in turn is the boss of our dog, who is two years younger than he is in human years. In their eyes, the older you are, the more power you have. To them, old is cool.
When you are a kid, being older means that you can do more. There is no awareness of the fact that aging can impose certain limitations on your activities, or your abilities, or your possibilities. I have a distinct memory of reluctantly being convinced a few years back while skiing with my then-eight-year-old to tackle a freestyle course complete with bumps and jumps that were too much, in my mind, for my aging bones to maneuver. But my son wouldn’t hear it: “Mom, why don’t you think you can do it? You’re old enough!” To him, the older you are, the better you are and the more you should be able to do (and I did bomb down that run, however pathetically, something I would have never have attempted otherwise).
Most of us looked forward to getting older when we were kids. At some point that perception changed. The reasons are numerous and complicated. But with each birthday, as I occupy this space in life called middle age, I feel thankful for still being here. I can’t help but notice, as I scan the obituary section of the paper in the morning (a habit that many doctors develop to make sure that they haven’t missed the deaths of some of their patients, or in the case of pediatricians like me, more likely their patients’ parents) that there seems to be more and more people in that section who are exactly my age.
So I try not to get all hung up on numbers. I’m just happy to still be here. Though I sometimes need to pause and think about exactly how old I am (when you get into your late forties it all kind of starts to run together), I have no problem revealing my age to anyone who asks (usually the people who want to know are my patients, kids who are too young to understand that it’s not polite to ask a woman about her age). My own kids are fully aware that their mom is forty eight (sometimes they remember the number better than I do). I try to look at my advancing age the way my boys and my young patients do. As parents, we can learn a few lessons from our kids, if we let them teach us. As an “older mother,” I am particularly grateful for this little gift that my kids have given me. At a stage in my life where I could be grumbling about getting older, I am reminded that this is actually a good thing. The older you are, the better you are, in certain ways. It also means that you’re still here. Old is good. Old is cool.