As I’m turning around, I catch a glimpse of someone in the mirror so I stop long enough to take a look. Oh, that’s… me? No, can’t be. Who is that – that person – in the mirror staring back at me? That can’t possibly be me! I look over my shoulder, but there is no one else in the room so I look again. There are tiny wrinkles around those eyes; there are lines around the mouth. The eyes are a clear steel gray with a little twinkle of mischief; those must be mine. Where did the lines and wrinkles come from? Could that person in the mirror really be me?
Funny how you just never really think about some things. You stand in front of that same mirror every morning to brush your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face, and other regular and sundry habits, but you just don’t give it much thought with the exception of the strand of hair that needs smoothed or the makeup that’s just a touch smeared in the corner of your eye and needs a little fixing. All of a sudden something gets your attention and – wham! – who is that in the mirror?
It’s just about this time that I realize just how old I am. I’m over forty?! My mind balks at the rude awakening and my head reels with the implications. How could this have happened? I don’t feel like an old person. My mind is continually learning new things; I get as excited as a child at Christmas over things as simple as a rainstorm or a new book. Give me a cute pencil or bookmark with Xena on it and I am ecstatic. I still look at my husband with lust in my heart and want to drag him off to a secluded place to take care of the itch at odd moments just as I did when we were in our twenties. How could I be as old as that person in the mirror? That person is too old to be doing, to be thinking, these things!
I go over my preconceived ideas about people over the age of thirty – a hangover from being sweet sixteen and relatively innocent. People over thirty don’t have sex, do they? People over thirty are humdrum drudges that go to work and come home to watch TV until suppertime, and then they go to bed at the very decent hour of nine thirty. Their lives are stable and in order, and they know who they are and what life is about. Don’t they? Of course they do, answers the far corner of my mind that has been trained by my impetuous sixteen-year-old peers. The other part of my subjective wisdom says if that is the case, why have I not figured out who I am and why is life continually full of surprises for me? Here I am, well past thirty, and feeling things that I have already deemed inappropriate for my age group. It’s quite the quandary for an eternal moment of shock.
I look toward the mirror again and see the perplexed expression on the face that is mine and I feel a sudden urge to laugh. Why am I laughing? I’m laughing at the fine joke that nature and time have played on my immortal sixteen-year-old self. I am laughing because I’ve always felt a little “out of sync” with the “norm” and it’s probably time I accepted that. I am laughing at my preconceived ideas that will never mesh with the realities. I am laughing because even though nature has had its little joke, I’m having the last laugh – time can force my body to grow old, but it can’t force me to grow up. As long as I don’t completely grow up there will be the twinkle in my eyes, adventure of new ideas, and the excitement for what the new day brings.
Just remind me not to look that closely in the mirror too often, okay?