AGING


I’m still asking myself, “What will I be when I grow up?”

Although my face and body have aged appropriately for my years there are still places inside me that are stuck in childhood. The adult me stands tsk-tsking in disapproval and disgust every time my little child reacts to life in ancient and tattered knee-jerk dysfunctional patterns.

“God! Get over it! Grow up!” I shout at myself. But the little girl just huddles in a corner and cries.

“Okay, wrong approach,” I think. I pull my little girl gently from the corner, hold her in my lap and wrap my arms around her. “Hush, hush,” I whisper. I want her to feel how much I love and cherish her, but as long as her face is buried in my chest I can’t tell if I’ve succeeded.

I wonder if other seeming adults cradle their damaged children. I can’t be the only one.

Too often I feel that this whole aging thing is just a masquerade I’m engaged in and one day I will be found out. That face in the mirror I see isn’t really me.

And some day the aging police will come along and ask me, “What will you be when you grow up?”

And I will look at them perplexed and admit, out loud, I don’t know.