Age Anxiety, From Whence ?

Today is my mother's centennial birthday. Died four years ago, but my brother reminded me that it was her 100th birthday today. My dad had his centennial birthday three years ago. If you're thinking that must make me feel old, no, it really doesn't. What makes me feel old is when I think how close I am to being 100 years old myself. Just kidding. I'm not that close. Even though I don't feel old, I think I inherited my mother's anxiety about talking about age. I think she may have even lied about the age she was when she married my dad. I'm not sure because I haven't seen her birth certificate, but I don't really like to talk about age either. It does feel like it is a huge deal to a lot of people, and I guess it's a huge deal for me too or I wouldn't ever feel anxious about it. I never felt old at all until...well, let me just tell you. I didn't even notice my wrinkles until I got my first cataract surgery about two and a half to three years ago. I guess that's when it really started to happen. It was only after that, that I started noticing more aches and pains. Wait a minute. I'll tell you when it first began. The awareness of age creeping up on me really began in 2015 when I drove to Nashville, which is normally about a 12-13 hour drive from where I live and I used to commute back and forth from Knoxville for several years in the mid 90s. Oh, my goodness. So, to make a long story short, I was supposed to go to a show in Nashville hosted by the person who had signed me as a songwriter three years prior to that. I even broke the drive up into three parts, staying all night along the way. Well, when I got there I didn't realize how tired I was. I should probably not even have gone to the blankety-blank show. But how could I not go to the show when that was the purpose of my trip? I mean there just was no way not to go. The first thing that happened was when I got to the hotel and I realized how tired I was. I was exhausted, actually vibrating from head to toe with fatigue, the worst tiredness I have ever experienced in my life. I just needed to lie down and rest. But there wasn't time. So I went back downstairs, got in my car and started driving, not really knowing where I was going, and then I had my accident. Someone was turning right across from me and I was going straight across the street and they crashed into me and messed up my fender. So, the result was that I could still drive the car to the show, but there was no way I could drive back home the next morning, so I ended up leaving my car at a dealership down there for TWO MONTHS. My pastor lent me his family car for that whole period, I took the bus back to Nashville and drove myself home. What a saga, right? It was awful, except I did meet a cool musician guy from England I got to sit beside most of the way home, and we had a wonderful conversation. His name is Matthew Colthup. You might know him. I got an email from him a few weeks ago. The deal was there was this really creepy guy kind of following me around with his eyes and my eyes fell on Matthew as we were about to board and I asked him if I could sit beside him. I have pretty good instincts, thank God. I felt safe with him all the way home, which might have been a different story. Anyway, I need to wrap this up because I'm going out to eat in less than a half an hour. I don't know if I have answered my question adequately or not. But that is my story. So, the bus trip was when I first noticed age creeping up on me, because I had driven back and forth seven hour drives and 13 hour drives for years and never had problems like that. And then it was the cataract surgery and seeing my wrinkles. It was actually several years later that I started having the aches and pains all over and having to reckon with them. But I don't want to bore you with that. I just want to say that age is NOT a number, don't let anyone tell you that. It is a lie. Whatever you feel you must do, you must do while you are as young as possible. Not saying you can't start late doing things, because I certainly did. I am very blessed. I am on NO prescription drugs, no anti-depressants, no high blood pressure medication, nothing, and I like it like that. I just want you to know that the thing is real. I'm still not going to tell you my age though. Maybe I'll tell you more about why another time.