The one, two, maybe three digits indicating how long a person has walked this earth say succinctly what thousands of letters can. Age is not just a number; it is a story. With those digits, a person may glean what another has lived through, what events they have seen trickle through the sands of the hourglass, what youthful energy still resides with all the wonders they have yet to experience.
Trends relating to age have shifted across the centuries, always with a different, but by no means obligatory time to be doing certain things. Looking back, now, it is easy to see that everyone has their own timeline and pace they follow. Generalities can be spoken of, with the understanding that there are always deviations.
For example, the age at which to have children, biologically or otherwise, has been relatively young, when barely out of college or even while still attending. In other words, early twenties, give or take.
From the perspective of a daughter whose parents knew their greatest wish was for their children to have more than they did, this means a chance of a long life with her parents still present, still able to participate in demanding recreational activities without the pain of life chipping away at their health. Being born when her parents are in their twenties means a greater probability of them seeing all she wants them to see: her graduation from high school; college; the launching and flourishing of her career; grandchildren.
But this dissection is not presented by her. It is composed by someone whose parents were in their mid-forties when they adopted her, and so her thoughts of the future are not so clean and easy. Her worries are not constantly present; she is not consciously aware of them always haunting each moment. But they show up in other ways, in her fierce determination to live in the present, to savor each moment, fully enjoy a today that is not infinite. She wonders how long her own future offspring will know their grandparents for, accumulates "what if" scenarios and runs the numbers in her head to see how old her parents will be for each milestone.
In doing this, present though she thinks she is, she still misses out. Because she, too, must understand what an age shows about a person. Hers are older parents, and with that elevated age comes its own worries, but not without benefits unique to such a trait. Her parents had time to live their lives, to figure out how to navigate the world, themselves, each other, and parenting, having had another child earlier in their late twenties, early thirties.
She wants to fret, but for all her concerns there is a whole other side to having older parents, and that comes with wisdom only time can bring. Life presents each person with different amounts of experiences at varying points, but time always provides its own brand of insight. The worried daughter's parents lived and learned. They settled into the routine and environment they wanted for themselves and their growing family, saved money, networked, researched the area around them for the best of everything they could afford, made mistakes, and learned.
Her mother built up and maintained the household, found out which ways accomplished each task in the best way. Time and energy were both optimized. Recipes were tweaked. Family members and friends were consulted. Her mother navigated herself and her own mother through emotional litigation away from an abusive father, ensured that was wrapped up and as behind them as can be for when she wanted to expand her family. She established herself as a manager for an entire department, helped and was helped by those around her, finding out the most efficient way to run the department and herself.
Her father worked hard and saved money. He too made errors and learned. The longer he focused on his career, the longer he had to put all the pieces together, to find where those pieces even were, what they looked like, what it all entailed. No one goes through life knowing what to expect, but that does not mean it is impossible to prepare for the variables at play. That is what waiting did for this couple and, ultimately, their daughter. Time helped them account for variables. Major events have no single right and wrong way to approach them; the years spent waiting to live before having children gave this couple time to learn that and to see how to make the best choice out of the available options and the ones they forged for themselves.
The passing years are each of them paradoxes. As the number grows higher, shorter seems the chances to be with those we love. But even with what a mounting value takes away, that shrinking distance to the ultimate finality gives much. Age is not just a number: it is wisdom. It is easy for individuals such as the child with forty years between herself and her parents to keep a stopwatch running throughout her life. But she, and all in a similar situation- parents, children, families, friends- must take as many moments as possible to appreciate what wisdom aging provided for them all.
