Becoming

I am getting old. There...I said it. The thing is...I've never minded saying it. In fact, I've always wanted to say it. For as long as I can remember I wanted to be thirty. I can still remember sitting in my childhood bedroom daydreaming about that ever-elusive and all-knowing age. Now that I am a year away from forty I am trying to determine which age I want to be now. Thirty was good for me...as every year past it has been...much better than all those years before (with exception to the glorious ages of 7-12...I loved those kid years). But now I am starting to really comprehend all the talk about midlife crises and mortality. I am a kid at heart trapped in an old soul. That just about sums up my entire existence. There are times when I want to be so silly and then there are times when I actually look forward to being the little old lady with the jowls who shuffles happily through the library. But is that lady happily shuffling because she lived a full life...one filled with child-like wonder? Or is she simply happy to be alive? Hopefully a little of both.

I'd like to start living a little more purposefully than I have been. I want to be able to enjoy being the age I am instead of waiting to become another age.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my kids are teetering on the edge of being little kids and becoming young adults. As their mom I am starting to worry that I have not done all that I should have...all that I could have...to ensure that their childhoods were the best. "WAIT!" I want to yell...."Don't cross over that great divide just yet." Deep down I know that I did the best I could. Deep down I know that they know that I love and support them. Perhaps that is just how it is with motherhood...we always want what is best yet fear what is worst.

In one regard my "time of becoming" has passed. I am who I am. Yet, in another regard, there is still much more for me to become. I am starting to get excited at all of the possibilities that await me. Part of my becoming is being able to watch my kids become themselves...and if that is what it means to grow old...then lucky me!