Age

I believe it is a common habit of human beings to have a fixed self image frozen in time - like something branded on the brain - a definitive picture in our heads of who we are.  My own physical self image seems forever bound to the mid-nineties while I was in college - a lean, muscular 165 pounds.  As I write this that was well over a decade and forty pounds ago.  I am fatter and grayer and my smile induced crows feet seem to get bigger by the month.  Even-still, when I see a picture of myself I am filled with shock - thinking to myself - do I really  look like that?

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I know I’m not old.  Let no offense be taken by those further down the path of life than I.  32 is young.  Heck, these days the only people I consider  aged are withering away in nursing homes.  But when I was a kid I thought people in their mid-twenties were depressingly ancient.

 

Everyone wants to stay young.  But age is a fact that everyone has to deal with in their own way sooner or later.  For me, it seems that the issue is increasingly forefront in my mind.

 

Take my nightly ritual, for example.  When I was younger I would step into the bathroom for a few seconds to wash my face (so zits wouldn’t invade by morning) and to brush my sugar-coated teeth.  It was simple and quick.  Now, however, my night-time preparation is a different story. 

 

I still wash my face and brush my teeth, of course.  But now I have this arduous saline treatment to clear out my screwed up sinuses.  I dissolve a packet of medicinal salt into a plastic container of warm water that looks like a white genie’s lamp.  After swishing this around with a little plastic spoon I tilt my head to one side and jam the long skinny spout up a nostril, pouring the liquid down my cranial plumbing and hydrating every crusty presence that would end up hampering my breathing in the night.  After repeating this process over and over again from nostril to nostril I ‘gently’ blow my nose into a tissue which comes away about as snot-soaked as  Tammy Fay Baker’s.  Then, as if this weren’t enough I place a ‘breathe-right’ anti-snore nasal strip on my nose - it’s patented design widening the girth of my schnoz by a good half inch.  With this done I look myself in the mirror, sigh heavily at the bags under my eyes and the gray hair on my head, and fat under my chin, and wonder how in the world my wife still likes to kiss me - which she does!

Yet despite all, I have to say that I am happier than I ever have been.  The benefits of aging far outweigh the costs:  marriage, kids, a job I love, not to mention the wisdom of a gray head...Proverbs 16:21!  Leaving those younger days behind is fine with me.