"You are as young as you feel"; a complicated adage that only my peers have the wisdom to understand.
As a requirement of my new job I had to get fingerprinted (again), have a current TB test and present a negative Covid test. I will also have to wear something other than pajama bottoms and black tank top, and I will be masked for seven hours a day. As I prepare (I officially start tomorrow) I have looked through my closet for presentable outfits that fit my new Covid figure. But this has not been the only discouraging task of the past week. When I filled out my paperwork for my TB test, the nurse asked me to review the information for correctness before he gave me that tiny jab under the skin. I said everything looks right except you got my age wrong. I'm 66 not 67. He replied with no affect in his voice, "oh that's because your birthday is so close; it's a rounding error."
I remember being a child and saying my age as some number "going on" a larger number. And that felt good when I was ten years old. But now it doesn't feel any good to say I'm sixty-six going on sixty-seven. It feels better (and more accurate) to say I'm sixty-six but I feel so much younger than that number. I don't want to be reminded that the years are speeding by. In fact, I would be delighted to find that they are now going backwards. I'd like to have all this wisdom and financial security but only be about forty-five years old. Yeah, that sounds good. Let's just stop time at forty-five. So, when I looked at the nurse incredulously when he told me my age was just a rounding error, he got the message. "I'll just cross that out and write 66." Yes you will because I am going to be 66 until 11:55 pm on September 24 when I actually am required to report my age as 67!
I am reminded of the age of my body on an almost daily basis. When I take a morning walk in the humid Virginia summer I have to wait a full forty-five minutes for my body to cool down enough to take a shower. The thermostat is starting to show signs of wear. When I break my wrist playing pickleball and I tell the orthopedist that it still hurts eight weeks later he replies with "well, I would expect that". The automatic repair system is taking longer than it used to. When I chase my eighteen month old granddaughter around Target while my son does his necessary shopping, I enjoy it so much, but I go to bed soon after she does that night. My stamina just isn't what it used to be. And I am not happy about any of this so let's not hurry things along by rounding up.
Tomorrow I start working at my school 28 hours/week and I am still transitioning some of my clients, so this week looks pretty overwhelming for someone who has just come off eighteen months of working in her pajamas and interacting less than 15 hours/week on a screen. Half of those 28 hours will be in classrooms full of exuberant six to eleven year olds and I will be attempting to engage them while masked. Seems like it was good practice to run around Target with an eighteen month-old. As much as I think that teaching the young ones about their feelings and their brains will be rejuvenating for me, I know it will also be (initially) exhausting. Even more exhausting will be interacting all day with new people who will be my colleagues. Yet I not only chose this, I sought it out.
The Covid life has been its own blessing of slowing things down and allowing many of us to rethink and regroup. It certainly "allowed" me to make the choice to move closer to my children, a decision that has come with many losses as well as many gains. So as I looked for ways to anchor my new life in Virginia, I chose a school setting where I would work with little ones daily and collaborate with other adults who find the school setting a meaningful one. I am going to take the exhaustion so that I can have the rejuvenation (Merriam-Webster ~ rejuvenation: to make young or youthful again; give new vigor to). I am going to round down as I ramp up. I am going to tap into my youthful nature, draw from the wisdom of my age and respect my slowing body as I venture into this next enterprise.
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