A Good Age to Contemplate Age

I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf, health-wise.  Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I am six months out from turning thirty.  I’ve been looking at pictures of my mom when she was 29, and would you believe that that woman looked 20?!  With two young kids and a capacity for doing everything, she looked like a baby in those days.

I swear my first wrinkle crept up on me several months ago.  I noticed it after posting a selfie to Instagram and I thought, I look different.   I didn’t mind it - I was starting to look like less of a girl with my baby face already becoming something of the past.  My youngest brother put it perfectly when he pointed out, “you look like a mom.”

Which, is actually fine by me.  I am a mom, but I know that thing he noticed.  With Mommy gone, there is a void and sometimes, in family dynamics, in tough situations, in the loneliness that comes from being a daughter without a mother who needs parenting advice, I’ve become older.

I sort of covet my wrinkle, which I’m sure was brought on by sleepless nights and tears after we lost Mommy so suddenly.   The wrinkle can only be a symbol on my face that we are all going to change.  Willow will turn 4 in three days and I’ve gone from feeling like a kid with a baby to something else.  

I just decided to get in the best shape of my life.  It’s something I want to push myself to do.  No excuses.  I am likely distracting myself from painful things, from loss.  Those mountains do not move so I have to go around them.

When I have quiet moments of solitude, the air gets thick with memories.  They settle on me when I meditate and I have to push through them with such effort.  Sometimes, I get stuck and I emerge from those times feeling 7 years old again.  When I keep going, I can sometimes get to the other side feeling no age at all.  I forget about the dinner I need to cook or people I need to e-mail and I just feel like me and that me-ness has no age.  I wonder if that unburdened feeling is what kept Mommy looking so young.  I will covet that feeling in place of some goal of physical perfection.