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When you’re little all adults seem big, and old.

I’m reading THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE by Audrey Niffenegger. When Claire said this to Henry on page 13, it started me thinking about turning forty in a few months. Now, this doesn’t bother me in the least. I welcome growing older as I do seem to grow better and wiser. I think that mentally, emotionally and spiritually, I am the best I’ve ever been (the body…not so much).

I was reminded about how when I was young, I thought thirty was old and forty was ancient. I know that’s extremely common; still it is no less odd when you find yourself reaching those milestones. When my mom turned forty I was fifteen-and-a-half and my sister was almost twenty. She’d also been a widow for about sixteen years.

I can’t fathom it. I really can’t. My brain just cannot wrap itself around the concept, which seems really stupid to me because I was there but perspective makes a big difference. How do you survive losing your husband, who was quite literally the love of her life? Then six months later deal with the still-birth of your son while carrying for your newborn girl and 4-year-old daughter? Yes, she had sisters and my grandparents but my aunts all had young children too. In fact, the sister she was closest to had kids the exact same age plus one in between. (I still find it odd that they were both pregnant at virtually the same time. My mom had a miscarriage otherwise they’d have had a matching set.) To make matters worse, less than a year later her mother died and my mom was close to her mom.

None of this is new to me, as these facts have all been part of my story since birth. It’s not the first time I’ve taken these things and examined them under a microscope either and I am certain it won’t be the last. The difference now once again is perspective. How you see these events, how you feel about them changes given where you are in your own life.

As a child I just knew how this all affected me. I grew-up with the knowledge that three people who would have been very important in my life were dead. In fact, I dwelled on it. I convinced myself that my twin brother and I would have been thick as thieves; I would have been a daddy’s girl given that he and I seem to have the same thirst for adventure (something my mom and sister don’t seem to share as they have expressed no desire to see the world the way I wish to); and that my grandmother would have been the doting, cookie-baking type you read about it in books.

And while all of that is entirely possible, it is also far from the only scenario. There are any number of other possibilities that aren’t so picturesque. I never entertained them, preferring the fantasy I had written instead. I see now how my head-in-the-cloud way of looking at life made dealing with reality that much harder. Hell, even now as much as I try to live in the “what is” of the present, that mentality is still my first instinct and still causes problems, most especially when it takes me an inordinate amount of time to realize that I’ve been dreaming again and not living in the moment. It is easy to do though when the moment is too painful. And who doesn’t want to escape now and then.

That’s the point though, isn’t it? The escape needs to remain “now and then” and not consume “most of the time.” It’s a hard balance to strike when you’ve always lived your life at the extremes.

So today’s caution is: DO NOT WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE ALMOST FORTY TO MASTER BALANCE AND PERSPECTIVE. Start now, chickadees, as I can assure you the lesson won’t get easier later. I've been working on it for too many years to count and still miss the boat.

DAILY ACCOUNTING
Stayed up all night purely because I could. Slept about 4 hours because anymore would make going back to work on Tuesday that much harder. Eating well as there are still frozen ho-ho’s in the freezer to attest that they were not my main source of sustenance today. Remembered how much I like my shaved ice machine though it tastes much better with regular kool-aid than it does with the sugar-free kind. I’m sure if I had some tequila in the house it would taste even better!!! Relaxing is going well, making progress on all the things I should be doing…not so much.