I was looking through my CDs the other day for my copy of Van Morrison and the Chieftains’ “Irish Heartbeat.”
I opened the cover to read the liner notes and it suddenly hit me as I looked at the copyright date that the CD came out TWENTY years ago (it also says something for the longevity of the CD format, as it was the original copy I bought in 1988).
Twenty years? Really? It sounds terribly clichéd to say so, but it does seem like it was just yesterday.
After turning 41 in April, somehow that turning of the odometer weighs more heavily on me then when I turned 40. There’s a certain finality to being in your 40s — no excuses, you really are an adult now.
The other irony of becoming “an adult” is realizing that almost everything your parents told you would happen, did.
Just like I was in my early 20s, my 20-year-old sister-in-law and my 25-year-old brother don’t believe me when I say that now is the time to seize the day. All the drama you find yourself embroiled in your 20s is really just spinning your wheels — the next 20 years are going to go by so incredibly fast that it will take your breath away.
I don’t feel like I’m “middle-aged.” My husband and I try to reassure ourselves that 40 is the new 30. People think we’re much younger than we are — in my case, it might have to do with the fact I refuse to give up wearing Converse All-Stars.
I feel incredibly lucky, however, because I’ve got great genes on both sides. My mother is 61 and looks 10 years younger. Her mother, my grandmother, bless her soul, stopped aging at about 75 — and lived to be 93. My father’s side is long-lived as well.
So really, I try to reassure myself that as long as I continue to take care of myself, I technically haven’t quite hit “middle-age.”
And I’ll concede for now that there is at least one other thing my parents told me that was right on the money: wear sunscreen.
Andrea Miller is features editor for The Enterprise.
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