My Son is 9, and I am "Aging"

My older son turns 9 today. He’s awesome and fun and flawed and growing up. This essay is not about him. 

On the eve of his 9th birthday, I learned I have arthritis in my left knee. Hearing this news in the doctor’s exam room felt at first like an inevitability, like something I should’ve been expecting. Like my response naturally should’ve been, “Yes, doctor, I had considered that arthritis could be a possible outcome of these recent symptoms.” But when I got in the car and cried (seriously, tears streaming down my cheeks like I had lost someone important to me), the preliminary diagnosis felt like a sentence. I was blind-sided, expecting anything other than a degenerative joint issue. Maybe not a death sentence exactly, but absolutely a reminder that my body can’t do what it once did, that pushing myself has consequences, that I am not immune to bodily wear and tear, as much as I’ve pretended to be.

At what point do birthdays switch from highly anticipated events to dreaded occasions? I’m not dreading my birthday, per say. Forty-one, coming this summer, seems like a non-event. It’s just the passage of time without my permission that I resent. My now-9-year-old has been counting down the days until today since March. My younger son is already marking time until his in November. 

When does it switch from growing up to aging? I'm definitely in the “aging” category now, with my body apparently thinking my next age jump is a higher number by several decades, but did it switch in my 20s? Or maybe when there were responsibilities like a mortgage and managing of regular paychecks and budgeting? Budgeting feels like the MOST adult task. Surely aging follows the advent of budgeting closely.

But change never stops. I used to have this idea that at some point, I’d be fully cooked. I’d be done and just had to maintain. Maintenance is easier than growth. Growth requires struggle, while maintenance is a living routine, consistency. I am VERY good at consistency. I can do the same things, eat the same foods, follow the same plan, day in and day out as long as “it” takes, whatever “it” happens to be. However, maintenance is a myth because time is the Z axis, moving us in a forgotten dimension. There is no standing still, no maintaining.

I guess my point here is that death is inescapable and will come for us all. 

Ha. 

Just kidding. 

I mean, that’s the truth, but it’s not the point of my ramblings today. 

My first reaction to the arthritis news was that I love running, and it’s being taken from me. I immediately went into woe-is-me mode. But what I love more than running is living in reality, and I suppose that necessitates some acceptance of change.

Until I gain the ability to suck the youth and vitality from children like the witches in Hocus Pocus (speaking of aging, that movie did so poorly, did it not? A child tells a slightly older child that she has great yabbos in one scene - I’m not kidding), I’m going to have to come to terms with my eventual bodily deterioration. And maybe I can cut back on (or stop doing) activities that hasten its effects. Like sigh running. 

And while this does bring back my favorite questions surrounding identity, I’m coming to realize that my relationship to running may not have been the healthiest anyway. 

I’ll just finish with this then: Happy Birthday to Alex. May you see your mom as a flawed human being struggling to figure it out, all while loving you and your brother more than everything on earth. And may you give yourself the permission to be a flawed human being who never stops trying to figure it out also. You are never fully cooked.