By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
It was the time change that made me notice it.
I suppose there is something about having daylight or darkness in places where it hasn’t been recently that causes us to observe things we might not otherwise.
I learned that driving in the dark—or even in the dim twilight before dark—isn’t nearly as effortless for me as it used to be. At one point while traveling down the road, my eyes were certain they saw something crossing in front of me, but there was nothing there. It reminded me of those videos I’ve seen in which someone supposedly catches a ghost walking by. It was an outline, but transparent. I am certain it wasn’t remotely paranormal; it was simply the fading light causing my less-than-stellar eyes to play a little trick on me. But I had no idea I was so susceptible to such trickery. It’s already nerve-wracking enough to drive at night this time of year, what with all the deer we have. Now I see that ordinary low light is apparently just as challenging.
Unfortunately, my newfound difficulty driving at night isn’t where the discoveries end. Each new finding seems to confirm that my years are piling up. There’s the frustrating business of trying to find a comfortable distance at which to hold reading material. I have reading glasses, but I’m still at the stage where I’d rather squint and repeatedly adjust the words than surrender and wear them. And we won’t even talk about the joint pain.
It’s all very odd to me. I know how old I am, but it’s difficult to believe. In my mind, I’m still relatively young. I don’t mean teenager-young, as I’m well aware I’m no longer in that neck of the woods. I’d say I feel, oh, I don’t know, maybe early thirties? The idea that I’m only five years away from fifty is nearly unthinkable.
And interestingly enough, my daughter is struggling a bit with her age, too.
Her issues aren’t quite like mine, as she is currently enjoying the ripe old age of ten. But she’s stuck in a bit of a limbo with her age, and I watch it with wistful fascination. You see, she’s a kid but also almost a teen. I definitely understand why they call them tweens, because that couldn’t be more accurate.
There are days when she tells me stories about the drama in her friend groups and the elementary-school romances. Sometimes she doesn’t want me to do her hair a certain way because she says it’s too babyish. She loves wearing a hoodie regardless of how warm the day is going to become, because she’s seen the high schoolers doing it. There’s a definite streak in her of wanting to be—or at the very least, to appear—older.
But the very moment she has some sort of teenage angst, she’ll return to being a child again. She’ll see some dirt and become immediately invested in playing in it. She’ll be around friends, and they’ll start acting silly and making ridiculous noises. Then she joins in the giggling and revels in the simple frivolity. Nothing about it looks like someone who was, only moments earlier, bemoaning the woes of approaching teendom.
There are times when I can see the struggle within her. I see her wanting to take the kid route while also feeling the pull of what seems more mature. While my feelings aren’t exactly the same, I understand the struggle just a bit. Being one age and feeling as though you should be a different age is a very strange place to sit. From that vantage point, the past is in very clear view. So clear, in fact, that it feels as though it should be closer than it is, and you find yourself occasionally looking back at it with a bit of longing.
Looking ahead has its appeal, I would say more so for her than for me. And while I enjoy thinking about the days ahead, I feel a certain pull toward the past—toward those days when my hips didn’t ache and my eyes were still sharp. My daughter has her whole life ahead of her and everything in the world to look forward to. But even I can understand the pull of a pile of untouched dirt or a stick with wand potential. While she and I are both in an in-between kind of place, I guess there are some things neither of us has grown out of.
