How to Be Old Before You Die Part 2

If I look over the course of my life, I see that there were some notable gaps in the information that was passed down to me.  

At about age eight, I heard my mother mention an article in the news to my father about a baby that was found in a mailbox. My small brain wasn’t able to understand why anyone would want to do this with a gift from God. My mother explained that, when a woman was good, babies were a gift from God.  When a woman was bad, they were a punishment. That explanation was quite enough to permanently stop me of having any thoughts of shoplifting in the years ahead.

The rest of my mother’s explanations about sex consisted of two items:  Men don’t want damaged goods. And the other, why would a man buy a cow if he could get the milk for free?  These statements, in addition to stopping me in my tracks when any thoughts of sex might enter, also resulted in my firm decision never to live in a rural area, thereby avoiding both cows and general stores. 

The 40 years that followed were a lot easier to navigate, consisting mostly of getting past my mother’s admonitions and eventually experiencing sex, pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing. Then, when I least expected it, I was faced with the second major information chasm of my life, in which there were no roadsigns or maps. My mother was long gone. And avoiding rural areas didn’t help. I was pitched headlong into aging. 

I’ve now had the privilege of navigating aging up close and personal for almost 30 years, 20 years longer than my mother was able to do. It’s a journey that has been fascinating, perplexing, rewarding, hilarious and truly awful. There’s been way too much written and spoken of it for me to repeat the same old tired observations. But, in retrospect, I do wish that somebody, somewhere, would have explained some things to me. 

There’s also enough crises in our country and the world to make concerns about aging seem a bit insignificant. It’s tough to whine about losing one’s hair when the world seems to be collapsing on one’s head. 

So, what’s a girl to do?  She can take the high road and say that aging is of no significance compared to the scary events of the world. Or, she can admit that it is entirely possible to experience three completely different beliefs at the same time: The world sucks. Aging sucks. She is still alive, And, thanks to that baby in the mailbox,  she still believes she can make a difference in the world. 

I hold on to a belief that the Mailbox Baby, after being discovered by the UPS, went on to have a good life. If that baby is still alive now they would be celebrating their 70th birthday, hopefully in good health and surrounded by family and friends.  I would love to meet that baby.  And tell them that, in spite of my mother’s explanation at the time, that they were a gift, if not to their birth mother, then to the world. That’s, ultimately, what we all are, whether we choose to unwrap the gift or not.