mid-life reflections

If my plan is to live until I'm 85, I'm one year away from being smack dab in the middle of life. The middle is an odd place to be (just ask any middle child). I picture it like being on top of a hill, looking back on where I've been, and looking ahead to where I'm headed...over the hill.

This is not the first I've pondered aging. When I turned 30, it was to Tim McGraw's My Next Thirty Years which I played incessantly. I put my dad's 60th birthday slideshow to Five for Fighting's 100 Years and it made me want to cry. And, when I was in 5th grade, I remember being in awe of my teacher's ability to tell stories...because when you're ten years old there aren't a lot of stories to draw from, and I looked forward to the day I'd have an arsenal locked and loaded with funny anecdotes. (It's as wonderful as I'd imagined!)

The first half of my life has been mostly delightful. I've done well for myself when it comes to relationships: I have two spunky daughters, I snagged myself the man of my (and my parents') dreams, and I have more ottomans than I can rest my feet on. I have no huge regrets looking back, except perhaps that I should have become a speech pathologist, or a teacher, or something more practical than a communications major, but then I'm reminded (by Greg) that I don't particularly care to be surrounded by children or teens. So for the most part, looking back over the hill I've climbed up, I see the grass is still green, though patchy in parts--much like my front lawn. You get far enough away, and the green weeds look like grass. I don't even know where I'm going with this analogy anymore, but maybe you do. I loved being a kid, high school was not great but college more than made up for it, my 20's were fun, 30's were a blur of babies, and now I find myself at 41. But when I think of the next 42.5 years of my life, it scares me a bit and I'm trying to figure out why.

I'm looking forward to growing old with my Greg under the roof he's quite literally provided, and throwing dinner parties for my kids, their friends, and eventually families. I told Greg last night, after returning from the grocery stores, that I always see older couples shopping together, and I look forward to doing that when we only have each other to worry about, and can buy fresh salmon for a Tuesday night without worrying about who will complain or how much it costs to feed 6 people healthful food. Of course, then Greg said I'd get upset if he tried putting stuff in the cart--which it seems I might (I've always seen shopping as a one person job), but thankfully future Sarah is super chill. And rich (no Christian school tuition)! And new Greg is super on top of stuff, so I can't wait to get new Greg and future Sarah together and see what adventures ensue.

Yes, there are many things I'm looking forward to in the second half of my life (though sadly the only example I've provided here is eating more fresh salmon mid-week) but sometimes it makes me a little sad thinking about it too. You know, fleeting youth. Oh, it's fleeted. It's gone. Thankfully I do not have a husband or a job that demands I never age--because there's nothing that bugs me more than when a beautiful woman wrecks her face. And there's nothing more beautiful than a woman's face that shows years of experience. I just don't want my experience to show on my face before its rightful time. (62 will be just fine.)

So why the sadness? Many people experience a mid-life crisis of sorts when they realize it's half over, and what have they to show for it all? I think Greg feels this sometimes, though he does have several building projects, two daughters, an amazing wife, and thousands of lives he's touched with his teaching to show for himself. (He is more talking bout the fact that he always thought he'd have written a movie by now--which he's currently working on.) Thankfully I don't feel this same pressure, and the fact that the memory of me will end with my children's children's children doesn't bother me in the least. (How much do you know about your great-grandparents after all?)

Quit my yammering already, what makes me sad? Here goes:

Time goes too quickly. I don't want to re-do any part of my life, but I miss people as they were before. My grandpa Nieuwsma making home-made ice cream for us, my brother and I playing as best friends (and worst enemies), sleepovers with my best friend Maria, seeing my college buddies every day, my dad with dark hair and a beard, my kids as babies...there is no going back. Kids have a way of living in the present, so the days seem so long and the summers endless (I used to think that summer vacation was as long as the school year). The older we get, the busier we get, and I think we start to see time as the future--what needs to be done, and when you're always looking ahead, it's hard to experience the present. It makes me sad that my dad is 71. It makes me sad that we have only 6 more years of Kate at home. It makes me sad that I am past my physical peak, and that I somehow missed it.

Sometimes I get bored with the monotony of life. I feel as though I'm in a groundhog day of shopping, cooking, cleaning, driving, writing, and finish the week just to start it over again. I've been living like this for 14 years now, and it's getting old. Thankfully, I've found that a couple things can cure this for me: the threat of something horrible which makes me appreciate the monotony of life, or having something to look forward to. So this past week we had some of our best friends over for supper, I bought an ottoman (which we actually did need, as our current one's high-class pleather is peeling), I started the whole 30 to re-set my food-mind-emotional ties, and I'm rebounding again (trampoline-jumping). So yeah, I'm not bored anymore, but I am a tad tired and cranky. (What? You try going off caffeine, alcohol, grains, sugar and dairy, and see how pleasant you are.)

The state of the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. I know there has always been war, drought, and depression, but doesn't it seem like things are getting out of control at an alarming rate? Greg said the other day that he felt weighed down by the craziness around him. I asked if he meant at school (there's always a sad story at school) or in the world, and he said both. (In retrospect I guess I assumed my Whole 30 melt-downs weren't a contributor of the crazy.) And yes, for the last couple years, things keep going from bad to worse in our world. It just keeps going on and on, and it makes me wonder what things will be like 2, 10, 20, or 30 years from now. This makes me sad for my kids future, and it makes me feel out of control (which I am for most of it).

So, there you go. Feel better? Oddly I kinda do.

The really good thing that I've found about life is that we're in good company. The woman in the picture above (no that's not me––I would never sit that close to the cliff) is not alone, someone is taking her picture. Every relationship you've had through your life, has helped you in some way, and we have community with people on both sides of the hill. We will not all get to live to be 85, so age is just really a way to keep track of how long we've been here, not how long we've got left. (I feel as though that may be one of the more brilliant things I've said, you may want to remember it.) A journey is always more enjoyable and fulfilling if you have people to share it with.

And now, I am challenging myself to live each day with the mindset that when I'm 85 years old, I'll look back fondly on these years as some of the best of my life. I have to soak up my kids while they're still home with me, I have to invest in my marriage so it thrives for a lifetime, I have to listen to the news less and pray more, and for crying out loud, I have to buy the fresh salmon now, because it's so very good, and my kids need to learn to suck it up and just eat the freaking fish already!