View From The Top

I had a birthday recently. They seem to be coming more quickly the older I get. I’m not over the hill. However, I’m afraid I can see the top of that hill from here. I don’t feel older, and don’t think like someone who is older. Except for all the kids are starting to annoy me more. And those kids? That’s anyone under 25 or so.

Babies that were born after I graduated from high school are having babies. People born in the nineties are becoming legal adults. You know, I changed my mind. I do feel old, after all.
When I was a teenager and in my twenties, I didn’t think anyone over 35 was capable of making wise decisions. They were out of touch with reality. Now I don’t think anyone under 25 is capable of making wise decisions. They haven’t experienced enough reality.

When I was in school, my parents didn’t get it because they were too old. Now my son doesn’t get it because he is too young. It’s funny how our perception of others changes as we change.
Logan wants to be an adult so he can have total and absolute freedom to do anything he wants. I laugh at that, and wonder where all my total and absolute freedom is. We tell him being an adult just means you have more people to boss you around. You have to pay bills and go to work and pay taxes and be responsible to all kinds of people for all kinds of things.

I’m not sure there is a perfect age, where it all comes together in harmony. Where you are old enough but not too old, independent enough but not burdened with too many responsibilities.
I do know that with age comes appreciation. I took a lot of things for granted when I was younger. I didn’t realize the food that magically appeared every week on the shelves took time and effort to get there, the house that was always in order didn’t happen because the good housekeeping fairy sprinkled her magic dust on it. Laundry didn’t wash and fold itself, bills didn’t get paid from money that invented itself.

The work that goes into having a family and raising children and holding down a job and having it all come together and making a success of it never crossed my mind. It just...was. How it happened and the worry over it all was never thought about.

Logan is taking a class this semester. In my day, it would have been called Home Economics. Now it has a longer name, something like Family and Consumer Science. I like that better. Successfully raising a family and running a home and sticking to a budget and surviving as an adult is a science, and needs to be taught. It doesn’t just happen, at least not if you want to do it well.

I’ve never minded getting older. My life has progressively gotten better with age. I made some whoppers of wrong decisions when I was young, paid for them in my twenties, got over them in my thirties, and now in my second decade of being in my thirties, I am the happiest I have ever been.

In another decade or two, I will cross over that crest and be over the hill. But that’s okay, because I bet the view is fantastic from the top.