The Fountain of Youth Doesn't Runneth Over

     I know a lot of old people.  Plenty of them are family, friends, colleagues and neighbors, and few, if any of them, complain. They move through life nearly invisible to the masses, surely encountering aches and pains on a day to day basis, enduring weaknesses that they simply didn't have at 20 or 30 years old.  Some are inflicted.  Others are restricted, and I just don't hear them gripe. 

     Maybe I'm not listening.

     I know they wake up with ailments. I remember as a little girl listening to the older people sitting around the dining room table.  They seemed old to me.  Everyone looks old to an 8-year-old.  They would speak the Italian romance language, but I knew it was about everything but romance.  I could see the worry in their eyes and the sufferring in their sunken cheeks.  My grandmother spoke with a flowered cloth hankie in her hand.  My aunt folded a paper napkin at the edge of the table, over and over, into a long strip.  Both  embraced their solemn Italian manner, their Catholic worry, repeating their mantra:  "Oh dio mia."

     Heck, today I was sure I'd been hit by a truck last night. But there was nothing on the news about it.  How could they miss it?  I think my hip is still in the street with the wreckage!  And my elbow.  And my knee.  And my sciatic nerve. (Oh, Sean has a field day with that one.  He says:  "I keep telling everyone, I've been married to a pain in the *&% for 17 years."  )

     Here's the tricky part:  I'm certainly not old.  My kids seem to think we're living in a college dorm which explains the dirty dishes in their bedrooms and the nail clippers found between the cushions of the sofa.  My husband seems to think I'm 24 which explains why he keeps selecting bikinis for my summer beachwear.  Enough said about that one. And my mother has truly forgotten my age since she insists I audition for American Idol even though acid reflux has taken over my vocal chords like the Mt. Vesuvius lava.

     The reality of the middle years, and that's all I'm willing to divulge about my age today, does not exactly compare to a walk down Easy Street. So I rise, caffeinate, tweeze, and get through it keeping in mind the lessons I've learned from the Italian women who once spoke to me in a language I couldn't translate, but learned to understand.

     Sean made the bed this morning humming "One love...One heart.  Let's get together and feel alright."

     How fitting.