Middle-age Has Come For Us

Middle-age has come for us and we have met it squarely in the middle. Truth be told, I think we’re past middle-age as fifty hovers on the horizon, brighter and brighter.

Readers. All the readers. I don’t mean people cozied up with good books. I mean lenses and temples and frames and a pair for every room of the house. 

I find myself either using readers with my contacts or removing my prescription pair altogether to read a book, an article, a menu. I feel like my dad every time and I understand now. The subconscious awareness of the memory of him removing his glasses to read the Reader’s Digest article. It’s been the oddest thing to adjust to, even though I’ve been doing this for six+ years now. I’ve had glasses since second grade and for years I couldn’t read a book without them. Who knew the script would flip? My dad, apparently. 😂

I thought I would be wise by now. Instead, I’m STILL trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. It kinda looked like life was easier and people had it together when gazing at middle-age from my teens and twenties. Who knew it was an illusion? Everyone in it, keeping the collective secret.

I have young adult kids in this decade of life. I adore them. They are two of my favorite people and as I used to tell them more often and should say it every week, “They are two of the best things to ever happen to me.” They make me laugh. I learn multitudes from them. They’re creative and smart and delightful and lovely. I find them to be the most fun. Who knew the abundance added to life through teens and young adult children? I see the foreshadowing as I look back over the years of loving those little people.

I cannot remember what I did five minutes ago. Twice this month I’ve opened a hose to run “just for a minute” to give the hydrangeas or hibiscus or hostas a drink, walked away with nary a care, and did not remember it for hours. They didn’t get a drink so much as they got an intoxication. Who knew how the brain cells would implode? There were signs. 

This body I inhabit is the same and different. This person I am is so much the same and so very different. Some aspects of life very much as always and other aspects, gratefully, have changed and grown and flourished and continue to ask good questions. Who knew becoming takes such intentional work? Anyone who has taken up the mantle of formation and humility. 

Middle-age has come for us and we are attempting to muddle our way through the mundane and marvelous, minutiae and melee, merriment and mess. 

Here’s to making our way forward……readers in hand.