What Does It Take to Make Peace with Growing Older?

Noticing the stuff you’d miss if you didn’t stick around helps.

I was born at the tail end of 1963. The day of JFK’s funeral, if you want to pinpoint it. Yeah, my birth is all wound up in the heartbreak of a generation. Not exactly an auspicious moment to show up.

I was one of those November babies that the Los Angeles Unified School District allowed to begin kindergarten at four. For years I was the youngest kid in my class. At least until the scary-smart ones started skipping grades.

Maybe that’s where it began. I was the youngest. That was part of my identity for a long time. Until it wasn’t.

I haven’t been the youngest in the room for a long time. My youngest daughter will be 26 in a few months. I should be, I don’t know, mature?

I see those women sometimes. The ones who looked fifty and even sixty in the face and laughed. Let their hair go grey and didn’t care.

They are mature but not old because old is a mental construct. They don’t have time to focus on that. At least, that seems like who they are.

Maybe they look in the mirror every morning and wonder how much spackle it is going to take to face the world. Change foundations weekly, knowing there is one that will be more flattering.

I wrote a piece in May about my struggles with aging:

Five days later I wrote about my struggles with the hormonal changes aging brings:

Sensing a trend here? Unhappiness with this stage of my life, maybe? Ya think?

In July, when the doctor suggested I may have already gone through menopause, I wrote about that, too:

The whole idea of not knowing threw me for a loop. Last month I was referred to a breast surgeon for something on my mammogram. That got my attention. Seemed a bigger deal than menopause.

The breast surgeon is awesome. She thinks the spot is a calcium deposit. She will order another mammogram in six months. So now I have a breast surgeon on my medical team. That’s new.

It is difficult to worry about something like my looming fifty-sixth birthday when the specter of breast cancer looks you in the eye.

My doctor called. The results of my blood test came back. I completed menopause sometime in the past. It felt anti-climactic. Is that because I had my little crisis about it in June?

My youngest daughter is engaged. She plans to marry after the first of the year. We knew this was coming.

Honestly, I thought I would feel extra old when it was official. I don’t. I guess I’m over it? All I feel is sincere happiness for her and her fiancé.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m going to try to lose some weight and get a dress that doesn’t make me look too matronly for the wedding. I haven’t turned into a different person or anything.

But I am hopeful the angst over my mirror is dying down. A hump of acceptance that is in my rear-view mirror.

What did it take for me to make peace with growing older?

• Looking at it squarely. No denial.
• Talking about it. Whining about it. Writing about it. Joking about it. Not shutting up about it.
• Getting a dose of real things to worry about like the possibility of cancer.
• This year my eldest daughter had a baby and my youngest got engaged. If I hadn’t made it to fifty-five, I wouldn’t be here to enjoy those things. It is a good reminder.
• Being totally honest here: finding out Sarah Sanders is NINETEEN years younger than I am. Seriously. How is that possible?