I am no longer a teenager or twenty-something.
I haven't been for awhile now. As a matter of fact, I'm closer to a forty-something at this point. Sometimes, though, I forget. Does that happen to you? Yesterday I took the boys to the beach to hide from the humidity for a few hours. We drove down the highway blaring hip hop, and for a few miles, they were quiet, allowing me to slip silently into my own memories. When I was a teenager, I had this pink paisley bandeau bikini. I was all skin and bones and gangly limbs, but still. I wore that bikini with cut-off denim shorts and spent hours at the lake with friends. We were teenagers; we owned the summer. I kissed a boy I thought I loved and floated on my back under a sea of stars. I would be sixteen forever. When I was a few years older, I wore a different bikini at a different beach. It was the Fourth of July, and I made some ridiculously foolish choices that sill make me blush. Still, I worked on my tan and maybe kissed that same boy again and owned more summer. I would be nineteen forever. But then time marched on. I guess you would say my experiences at the beach have changed a bit. I wasn't sixteen or nineteen forever, and I won't stay in my 30s. I'm working hard to embrace this new season. I worry more about slathering on sunscreen than lip gloss, and I play frisbee with my kids rather than flirt with an innocent crush. And when I get home, I study the earned roadmap of wrinkles around my eyes, make peace with my age, and turn on the Lumineers or Alt-J as a dinner-making soundtrack. Now I kiss a different man; I make wiser choices. I am no longer a teenager or twenty-something. And that is just fine with me. That contentment takes work, though. In a world with picture-perfect magazine covers and plastic surgery, sometimes feeling my age feels more like inadequacy. When I walk through the grocery store aisles, I'm not turning heads; I'm trying to remember where to find artichoke hearts. When I study my reflection in the mirror, I'm not taking note of a tantalizing tan; I'm cursing the heredity that gifted me with varicose veins and too-small ears. But still. I think of my grandmothers, each with beautiful white or gray hair and wrinkled hands that were soft to hold. So I will try to study my face with a dose of grace and imagine my future with grandchildren holding my wrinkled hands. Maybe we'll be on a beach somewhere.
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September 2020
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