Have you ever felt that as you get older time seems to fly faster? Do you remember how long it seemed to take for the holidays to arrive? I remember how Halloween felt a year away in January and how Christmas seemed to take forever to arrive. Even when I was a teenager we went through the school year as if we had been sentenced to a million years in purgatory with no sign of summer vacation in sight. How things change and how you become more understanding of how your parents must have seen things.
Now that I will be 46 in a couple of weeks how my perspective has changed. How I have changed. I am a realist, always have been. There are no delusions here. The changes are clear and I don’t deceive anyone about them, least of all myself. The first of these changes is how time seems to fly. We have not celebrated Halloween when here comes Christmas bypassing thanksgiving. There’s no time to so much as enjoy one before another pops up. It’s a rat race, scavenger hunt and tag you’re it game all in one. As an adult you only get to prepare but never really enjoy the celebrations you held so dear and with such anticipation as a child. I miss that. For me the physical changes are enough to deal with. The exhaustion that comes out of nowhere, those little things you forget though you just heard it a minute ago and the ever so deep plunge your patience takes with people who make no sense. You know what I mean? That last one is a doosie for me. I have never had much patience to begin with. Especially for ignorance or stupidity from any source. The only people who get a pass are kids and that depends on the age. Sometimes. Most times the child is a product of the parent but that is another subject for another time.
Now as far as emotions go I find that the most difficult. Aging is an angry bitch with a hacksaw. She hacks at your face and body without mercy until only the shadow of who you were remains. The worst part of that is your brain remembers. It remembers youth. The freshness of your young face before the sun spots, the young hands before the lines set in. It remembers and teases you and entices you. It even tries to convince you that you have not aged and can continue to do that which you did twenty or even thirty years ago. Reality then hits you when you cant lift that leg as high or run that fast if you can run at all without gasping that is. Age my friend is a clown with bad makeup and no friends. Still we love her. I do because as I age I learn. With all it’s pains I see my children grow and flourish and I am part of that. That makes me welcome age as my best friend because she’s been with me 45 years and still I am here. Dialysis will come and go and my transplant will come when it comes. I will continue to hold her hand as long as I can. My greatest wish is to hold her tight and do it with grace, dignity and most of all with my mind fully intact.