Higher Math

Barbara Payne

      I’m 54!

     When I met my husband Jim, I was 25 and he was 23.  We seemed the same age.   But when I turned 50 and he was still 47, I seemed a lot older than him.   

     Which is strange because when I first met Jim’s mother, she was 44 and I was 26 and she seemed way older than me, but now that my kids are gone and I am 54 and she is 72 we seem practically the same age.

     Jim’s friend Steve’s mother was 54 when I met her, and I was 26.  She seemed to feel sad that she was so old and I was so young.  She could think of me now and chuckle because now I’m 54.  Except she’s 82.  It would have to be a mirthless chuckle.  But not as mirthless as the one I’ll have when my daughter Allie is 54 and I’m 86.

     When I’m 80, my son Evan will only be 46!  When I was 46, I was miserable because I was almost 50.  But now that seems young.  So I shouldn’t feel old at 54 because when I’m 62, I’ll think 54 seems young. 

     If Allie gets married when she’s 26, I’ll be 58!  I should’ve had kids when I was 20.  Then if she married at 26 I’d only be 46.  Except I’d still be 54 now.  And she’d be 34!

     So maybe I should have had my kids when I was even older than I was.  I know people my age who have ten-year-olds.  That would make me seem young.  But people ask them if their children are their grandchildren!  That would make me feel old. 

     If I’d had Allie when I was 18 and she’d had a child when she was 18, and that child had had a child when she was 18, I’d be a great-grandmother now!

     Jim reminded me that I’ve always said I wanted to be an old lady.  That was when I was young!  Now I want to live to be old but I don’t want to be an old person.  So I’ll have to stay in really good shape.  Except I don’t want to be like that very attractive-looking woman that we saw from the back about 25 years ago striding briskly down the street while we were driving in New Jersey.  When I turned around to look at her face, it was old!  Like a scary fairy tale or a horror movie.

     I could get a facelift, except I don’t want to look like a very young old person or a very old young person.

     When Uncle John was 54 and I was 17, he was in good shape and drove a Porsche.  I thought he was pretty cool.  If I bought a sports car, young people might think I was cool.  But people my age would think I looked like I was going through a mid-life crisis.  Am I still young enough to be going through a mid-life crisis?  If I live to be 108.

     When I’m 70, Brad Pitt will be 56, and Jim’s mother will be 88, so we’ll all be old together.  Except that Jim’s mother will still think I’m young, so if I hang out with her I’ll feel young, but I’ll feel old, too, because I’m hanging out with such an old person and because my kids will be so much younger than me and they’ll be old at the same time.

     Mrs. Miller down the road is building an addition on to her house and she is in her 90's.  So 40 years from now I could be adding on to my house.  But people who aren’t even born yet will be thinking, She’s in her nineties and she’s adding on to her house?! just like I’m thinking about Mrs. Miller now.

      People will start to think that I could die at any time the way I think of Aunt Martha Sue who just turned 80.  They’ll think every time they see me could be the last.  After they haven’t seen me for a while, they’ll begin to wonder if I’m dead.  They’ll ask each other if I’m still alive and when they see me they’ll be shocked.

     When young people meet me now, they’ll think I am old and have always been old, even though I feel just like I always have.  I won’t tell them how I feel, though, because then they will pity me like I used to pity people my age who said that to me.  After about 25 more years, they’ll start trying to compute how old I am and think that I must’ve been a lot younger than I’d looked 25 years before.

         If Jim hadn’t told me I was middle-aged when I was 36, I could’ve gotten to feel young longer.  If I could just stay 36 forever, I would be happy, except that my kids would stay 4  and 1,  so after several years I’d begin to look like I was 54 anyway.

     It would be better to start out old and get younger, except that at the end you wouldn’t feel like dying.  But you’d be a baby, so you wouldn’t know.

     If you are 20 while you’re reading this, you think that you will never be as old as me, but in 34 years, if you are a person who saves everything, you could be rummaging around in your attic and find this paper and say, I’m 54!  But don’t worry, I won’t laugh.  I’ll be 88, and I’ll be thinking,  If only I were 70 again!