1 kings 1:1 reminds me of you, Dicka texted me the other day.
Not knowing the verse by memory, my mind raced to all the tender sentiments my girl likely meant for me. Hard to imagine a statement about a mother’s love at the very beginning of 1 Kings, but who could know? I flipped the pages to find out.
Now King David was old and advanced in years. And although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm.
I texted my kid a comeback, along with my signature string of emojis, but she wasn’t wrong. That ancient ruler and I were a lot alike—cold and old.
The first adjective is a no-brainer. Like people are fused to their cell phones, I’m attached to my sweater, and I’d never leave home without it. But it’s taken me a while to accept the second descriptor. At age fifty-one, am I truly old?
Relativity aside, yes. Just yes.
Years ago, when I was in my late thirties, a young mom approached me after church. With at least two little ones glued to her body and a diaper bag sagging her shoulder, she blew a piece of hair out of her face and flung out a question about raising children.
I looked around me, confused, and back at her. “Who, me? You’re asking me?”
She chuckled. “Yeah?”
Did she really think I knew what I was doing? I had hardly been at the job long enough to be an authority on parenting. I was scarcely old enough to have kids.
Except that I had worked the position for about ten years and was definitely old enough to give birth to the three who were at that moment begging me to buy them lunch at Qdoba. I could’ve even held grandma status, if life had dealt me a different storyline.
I think I mumbled something about what worked for me with whatever it was she wanted to know, but I left with one thought: My age scoots ahead of me faster than my mind can follow. And maybe I know more than I think because I’m older than I realize.
We like to say with age comes wisdom, but Oscar Wilde and I know that’s not always true. What is true is that life moves quicker than our mentality to adjust to it and swifter than the perception of our place on its timeline. My grandma was nearing her nineties when she said she felt like a young woman, but when she looked in the mirror, she saw an old lady. I inherited her sense of disconnect—which is everybody’s, I’m hearing—and I’ll be twenty-seven forever.
“Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. And I smile now because it sounds like we’re stuck right in the most wonderful spot ever, and it’s called NOW. And since there’s nothing I can do about time, I’m going to relax.
Age schmage. He’s got this.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.