Tomorrow I will turn 62. 62!! I mean what sort of number is THAT?  It’s so, well, BIG!! Now, I must admit that I don’t ordinarily spend much time thinking about how old I am, but every September, as my next birthday approaches, I seem to think about little else. And I usually think “this is a number I cannot relate to because when I was a kid (oh no…now I sound like my grandmother), people – women in particular – looked old, had grey or white hair with that blue dye rinse (what is that stuff?). They wore “granny” glasses and they weren’t worn as a fashion statement – they were worn by grannies. And then there were those sort of shapeless flowery print dresses that hung from their bodies in a way that made them look even more shapeless.  And to top off this ensemble, black tie shoes with a 1 1/2″ chunky heel adorned her feet.

That’s what the 60-something women looked like when I was growing up.  And they also had an “old” thinking. In fact, the word “old” was a regular part of their vocabulary, “these old bones of mine” or “I’m too old to ride a horse”.  I can promise you the word “old” rarely passes my lips unless it refers to things in my refrigerator that need to be tossed out. Admittedly, this is partly because of vanity and ego, but mostly because it’s just not a word that occurs to me to use when describing myself.  Happily, I live in a time when it’s very difficult to tell a woman’s age, hair coloring and gym memberships having a big influence on this fact. But the biggest change is in how different we, the over 50 set, think. For me, this younger sort of thinking has been further enhanced by the fact that I spent my 50’s watching Sesame Street, shopping for Dora the Explorer and Thomas the Train backpacks, reading Captain Underpants and an entire series of Fairy books – Heather, The Ballerina Fairy, Maggie, the Magic Fairy.  In the past two years, I’ve seen

Smurfs the Movie three times and Ice Age 4 three times.  I can hum the latest Katie Perry tune and know the name of the most recent Adele album.  This is not because I have an unusual taste in reading material and movies.  It’s because I am the mother of 11 year old twins.  Since giving birth not long after my 50th birthday, most of my days have been spent in the company of two short people, a.k.a. my children, leading me to believe that aging is not only a state of mind, but is also greatly influenced by who you hang out with.  Looking at the world through my soon to be 62 year old eyes as well as through the eyes of an 11 year old boy who is crazy about wildlife and drawing comics and an 11 year old girl who loves ballet, fashion and drawing, I figure that makes me about 40.  Now that’s a number I can relate to!

“It takes a long time to become young.”                                                         .                                                     Pablo Picasso