The ‘blogees’ have spoken and I am so grateful.  The most comments on my humble blog ever!  Thanks for your help.  You want humanness?  I got humanness!  Today it comes in the form of sloth.

I had a SAD day today on a sunny day!  That does not usually happen.  Sun and I are very simpatico and our moods align like BFF’s yielding productive, gratitude-filled days.  NOT TODAY.  Today, I found my face in my pillow three times.  Three naps in one day!  Unheard of.  And despite sleep, my usual elixir of clarity and energy, I got foggier with each round.

For a few hours, I thought I was ‘going down’ as we call it in my house when someone is heading towards a debilitating flu.  But no, I rebounded.  A friend had had a small heart attack over the weekend and I could not help thinking that my symptoms were echoing hers.  I questioned whether I was avoiding working on my book by developing a case of slothhood today.  None of it stuck as a real reason.

So, I surrender.  This gets to be ‘me’ today.  Not my best. Not my worst.  Not who I want to be, but it’s what I’ve got today.  Now, I just wish for bedtime.  Easy, you’d think.  The trick is getting three kids to bed so I can too!

I’ll try not to be maudlin here, but as I was making lunches for my kids the other morning, it struck me like a laundry list of to-do’s how many ‘things’ I used to be.

 I used to be thin.

I used to sing.

I used to dance well.

I used to be pain-free.

I used to have thicker hair.

I used to be driven.

I used to be an athlete.

I used to have friends I saw on a whim.

I used to be able to stay up late and get up early.

I used to wear wacky clothes.

I used to be free to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.

(Sigh) A focus on loss is a sure way to bring on depression.  I could build up a good head of steam here into an explosion of sadness here but I won’t. I’m used to observing what sucks and then figuring out the cause of what sucks and working on it.  It helps to keep any significant depression at bay.  With that said, it did strike me that much of how I took stock of myself was gone and that not much of it was regainable.  (i.e. a twenty-something’s metabolism)   The last 9 or so years of child-rearing has been so busy and intense that I did not really notice how much was going away.  It just hit me at once the other day.

 I used to think I’d never get old.

The truth is that many of the things on the list I could get back but don’t have the desire to focus on and retrieve.  I’ve moved on from a lot of it.  Others on the list, I am working on and others still are just nostalgic memories.  The list of what is true now, in the presen,t is bigger and very rich.  It’s just weird that every now and then, you’re going to be reminded of what you’ve lost.  That is life. 

 I used to not understand ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’.

 Something’s gotta go to keep going on. (But did it have to be my waistline?!)

Last week, I crossed the line.  I had a birthday that brought me closer to fifty than forty.  It hurt.  Literally. My back has been on its annual quest to remind me that I am at the effect of gravity and wear and tear. Despite physical therapy and a two-week break from anything that looks like exercise, I’ve been acutely aware of growing another year older.

I’ve always been a bit naive.  I was twenty-five when I first understood that policemen were ordinary people and not superheroes of some kind.  And I still thought I was twenty-five until my 41st birthday.  I just did not think I was ever going to feel my age much less feel old! The last five years have changed that and I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I have not made the transition to acceptance just yet.  Maybe it’s fair to say that I have not gotten to a consistent level of acceptance.  Just when I think it’s no big deal, I am faced with a new reminder that pulls me off my game.

While watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button over the weekend, there was a word that rung in my ears so loudly that I can’t remember the sentence that it was embedded in. Impermanence.  The words were uttered when Benjamin and the love of his life, Daisy, were at the physical age where they were compatible and together. The whole movie being about a man who started life with an old body, full of an old person’s ailments and aged backwards to an infant state at his death, was in essence about the impermanence of life.  

The Buddhists focus on impermanence as a central teaching to reaching enlightenment.  While in seminary, I heard no better example of this than a flower.  We watch a miraculous flower bloom into its full glory only to see it wither and fade within a short period of time.  We must enjoy it and revel in it and move on once it is gone.  Buddhism states that all suffering stems from attachment and if we are to live in disappointment at the loss of ‘the flower’, we are attached to the past and no longer in the present.

So, if I get back to the present and not compare how my body feels and looks to how it felt and looked at any time in the past, I have to be grateful. It works pretty well.  It looks pretty good.  I have freedom of movement and independence and can still feel more than just pain.  And if I’ve learned anything in the last few days since my birthday, it is to stop watching Hollywood awards shows.  IF I don’t look at female celebrities that are my age in sausage-skin dresses, I won’t compare myself to what I could look like in some future that is not here yet.  (deep, I know….)