When Did I Get This Old?

Musings of Fairness

~”The older the violin, the sweeter the music.” Augustus McCrae

Here in the high desert of Idaho, where we teeter on both the edge of the Rocky Mountains and the Snake River plain, we are in-between. It is not practical farm ground due to a lack of rain in the summer. Cattle graze on the range in the spring and get moved on to the mountain to escape summer heat. Fall arrives, not with the blazing alarm of color to announce it’s arrival, but with an internal realization that the cooler nights herald the urgency of buttoning up tight for the onslaught of winter.

August ushers in the week of our local county fair. I used to be a Fair Mom. I was into livestock, 4-H, FFA, exhibits of colored drawings and photographs, volunteering in the food booths, pig washing and general country kid stuff.

Hamlet was the first pig my son had. He was a placid red guy and was really very sweet, as pigs go. He turned out to be a red ribbon porcine, but he still sold for a princely sum in the sale ring, due to tit-for-tat small town business. Thanks David Excavation! You did amazing work on our house site build. Hope you enjoyed your Hamlet and eggs.

Now that season of life is behind me. I am living the ‘in-between’. I am not an Oldie Hawn. I am fit, healthy and in the best shape of my life. I just happen to have 7 grand-kids. I am letting my hair go native. Turns out it is complying nicely and it is a raw platinum color. My hair is the only part of me that complies with anything. I have spent 45 years perming, highlighting and coloring and it feels pretty good to be on the front of a trend, naturally.

Whiskey in a teacup is how Hubs describes me.

When I find myself in familiar surroundings but unfamiliar territory, it is jarring. I am like my geographic location, teetering between ‘over the hill’ and ‘across the river’. I see the Fair Moms of today, gathered in groups, talking and wrangling children and I feel adrift in this sea of the familiarly unfamiliar. How do I grasp the vine that swings me from one camp to the other? How long can I stay in the in-between?

I am at the stage where wisdom trumps any youth I carried. And the wisdom package happens to be smarter and better packaged than the season of spring in which I once lived.

As I debate whether to attend the rodeo that slides along on the boot heels of our county fair, my mind plays out the different possible scenarios. It is just like Centrum Silver High School. No more am I one of the young, hip moms, who hang out with their too cool kids in the livestock barn and huddle together en masse on the rodeo nights, the real American west. I remember laughing with my fellow Fair Moms at all the out-of town-city-chicks, dressed up in their faux-girl rodeo outfits, way before Yellowstone made cowboys, and the ranch life oh-so-bussin’. Bussin’ means awesome. Thanks to my 13 year old granddaughter for the lingo update into my grandma software.

Do I want to go and see those from my past who will probably go unrecognized by me because they are just so old?

It seems as if every time I am in the mash of The Fair Moms, it only serves to highlight my feelings of awkward out of place-ness.

Should I seek out my old tribe? Would we sit together at the top of the grandstand, watching what we used to be, in the Moms of today? Life passing before our very eyes, as we are relegated to the non-necessary? Do I want to go because my kids and grandkids will be there? They will probably be busy with their own friends. And when I see the little girls that I watched grow up, now metamorphosized into beautiful new mothers, it only serves to cement my place in nether regions of the rodeo bleachers.

Growing older with grace is a mindful exercise. I managed to take for granted, with youthful ignorance, the constant internal growth and change in my younger years. But, I am well aware of the fading shadows and light now.

The shift from the old guard to the new is complete. I am going to have to learn to be comfortable in my own skin, whether that skin decides to attend the rodeo or stay home with a good book.

Landslide

I took my love, and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
'Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
even children get older
and I'm getting older, too

Fleetwood Mac