Screw Growing Old…I’m Growing Young!

Remember that leap your heart made when a friend knocked on your door and asked your mom if you could play?
Please oh please oh please say yes, mom, say yes…
You bolted out that door and ran from all the adults as fast as your Keds would carry you.
Those words, “Come play,” still makes my heart leap.

I’ve decided not to age. Technically, we age from the moment we’re born. Technically, parts of our body peak at 30. But I’m not talking technically. I just don’t identify with this whole aging thing. It’s like death. Who gets death? Technically we die. Our pets, our loved ones, apple trees and hummingbirds, right whales and honeybees. We die. But do we? We fight death literally and metaphorically. Our brains, our hearts don’t know how to reconcile with this concept. It never feels right, does it?

My thought is because we don’t die. We transcend.
Various religions have given names to this basic belief. Eternity. Heaven. Hell. Reincarnation. Even if you say you don’t believe anything about the afterlife. Even if you say we become dirt or stardust which is still a form of transcendence we believe that something of our souls, for lack of a better word, lives on.

With that thought I whip back around to the title. If we have such a hard time with death then doesn’t it make sense that aging, just foreplay to death, doesn’t sit well either?

I know, I know. Aging isn’t all bad you say. You are rocking your new shock of white hair. You kind of like stepping out of the sexy game and wearing comfortable clothes and not worrying about the priss and preen that goes with attracting a mate. You love being retired and not feeling the pressure of getting out there every day. You argue that these are the perks of aging that come with the not so great perks of bad knees, high cholesterol and actually contemplating dentures.

Before I sound uncompassionate let me say that I know too well what it’s like to be a caregiver, to grieve, to take a sharp blow so hard that no breath comes, to be so relieved that a year that held so much pain is over even though I don’t even know or care what comes next. Life can be too full of all things shitty. That’s why I’ve decided to live with gusto whenever I can. Not because I’m oblivious to sorrow but because I am acutely aware.

Now that I’ve posted my disclaimer let’s get back to the fun stuff.
So instead of aging this is what I plan on doing for the next, oh, 30-50 years:

Play.
Be downright silly.
Laugh until I snort.
Goof off and waste loads of time navel gazing or the equivalent.
Nap.
Flirt.
Create.
Lighten my load–physically and emotionally grow lighter.

How?
By playing first of all.
By choosing to strip my backpack of hurts I’ve been nursing like sucking like crazy to get one more drop out of a dried up teat. By saying lots of nos and no thank yous–not for me, by saying big, crazy risk-taking yeses, by not doing a damn thing I don’t want to do and realizing it’s damn near impossible to do anything I don’t want to do. That means owning some scary shit. Then laughing at my own hand-made messes.

By standing in my own life and getting out of everyone else’s. Boy is this one tough. It’s a lot like hide-and-seek and running back to home base again and again.

By not taking myself, my darkness, my ugliness, my blinding ambitions, my tail-chasing avoidance laden quests, too serious.

Serious is too f*ing serious. (I love to curse folks, so I just might have to let loose and be my true self a little more often.

I just don’t give a shit about all the rest.
Arguing exhausts me.
I don’t give a rip about religion or politics or whatever else folks post on the almighty Facebook just to get a rouse out of everybody else. Vote. Sign a petition. Serve soup at a shelter. DO something with those beliefs and respect everyone else’s rights to think for themselves.

I’m going to have to feel my way through this growing younger thing.
Today, I’m going to doodle.
Swing so high my feet go over the lake behind my house.
Pull weeds.
Go to the beach and the pool with my granddaughter.
Make love to my husband (check on that one–accomplished that by 7am!….sorry if that’s a TMI but let’s get real!)
Eat watermelon.
Do some damn good writing (which I hope I am accomplishing right now.
Nap. It’s summertime people. Naps are mandatory.
Make up stories about fairies.
Eat food grown in dirt. If I’m going to eventually get back to motha-earth I might as well eat the rainbow and swallow a few dirt-crumbs along the way.
Then I’m going to the gym tonight and kill it on some weights. Sweat like crazy. Listen to some Kanye–nothing like gritty music to get you pumped.
Then I’m going to play with glow in the dark bubbles as the stars come out and at last fall into my hubby’s arms.

Good life.
Today is a play day.
I hope (and plan) to play my way through this life.
I will be the silly, goofy, crazy hat dancing in the streets 90 year old–and every day until I get there.

I have one question for you…Wanna play?

Wanna play?

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