The great Satchel Paige once posed the question, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” When I was younger I didn’t understand the potency of this question.  In the new forty I not only understand it – I have a response – 25. If I did not know how old I was my heart and spirit would tell me I was 25.  Lucky me, my mind, body and children all stand ready to tell me that my math on this one sucks.

It is an interesting phenomenon we experience as we age.  The body ages and the mind matures and ages as well, but the more important parts of our being – namely our heart and spirit – those do not age as much as they evolve in a haphazard and completely non-chronological way. Of course there is only a select group of folks who can understand this phenomenon.  To understand this you really have to have experienced it.  At a younger age you may be able to understand the intellectual premise having heard terms such as “young-at-heart”, “free spirit” or “mid-life crisis”, but from that viewpoint you can only understand the existence of the phenomenon – not the feeling of it.

I live within the phenomenon and I get it.  You can term it whatever you want, but the down and dirty of it is – some parts of me have not aged in lockstep with others.  This is both a blessing and one of the great ironies of the universe – feeling ever so young while growing older physically (we’ll save the humor in that experience for another day and another blog).

This phenomenon can cause quite a bit of consternation in the younger folks that surround the person who has embraced their enduring youthful heart and spirit.  My kids operate these days in an enduring state of “policing mom” – this entails almost daily sighs of exasperation, moans, eye-rolls, admonitions and mini-lectures that involve them telling me to “act my age” – this has become a full-time job for them as of late.  Some days it almost feels like they are older than I am…some days it seems as if I have become the errant teen and they have become the parent…some days there is a delicious irony in the role reversal and I am comforted by the notion that karma apparently is a law of nature (I offer that as something for the parents of teens out there to look forward to). 😉

So, I am 25 – of legal age and while I may be old enough to know better, I am still young enough not to care – what the hell…I still have my whole life in front of me. 😉

Day four hundred and twenty-nine of the new forty – obla di obla da

Ms. C