Going Without

It's January 2012 and I sit 3 months away from my 38th birthday.  As I suspect is the case for most women my age, I feel, on the inside, like I am still in my prime--which I have determined to be somewhere between the ages of 17 and 18.  That is the last age that I can remember wherein I was fit, trim, and felt bold and confident about my body.  Although I had been very active as a high school athlete, I got married (one week before my 19th birthday) to a man whose idea of exercise was lifting a beer can to his lips--regular physical activity wasn't a value in our home. Subsequently, my 20s were marked by periods of skinny-fat (being skinny but not fit) and yo-yo dieting because, as he often said, "What's to stop you from losing another 5 pounds?"

Ah the 20s...before my stomach and digestive track broke down in my 30s, I was able to eat anything I wanted (and did so, regularly), with nary a thought as to the food's benefit or detriment to my body.  One day my friend Teresa and I were going to a football game, and on the way that I stopped in to a Sonic for dinner.  When I asked her what she wanted, she replied, "Oh I can't eat this kind of food anymore.  My body just can't handle the grease and stuff."  Aghast, I replied, "I think I would DIE if I couldn't eat Sonic anymore.  That's sad."  After all, this is the same Sonic food chain who, periodically, produces a cake batter milkshake of which the taste rivals the ecstasy of a mediocre orgasm (yes, some orgasms are only mediocre).

Oh karma, you are such a fickle mistress.  Here I am now, in my late 30s, and the closest I have been to a Sonic is to gaze longingly at it as I drive slowly past.  Now realistically, I wouldn't want to put the junk they serve there into my body (very often), but to have a milkshake every now and then...oh what I wouldn't give!  The injustice of this situation is often marked by the echo of a childhood "I told you so."  My aunt Frances, while watching me eat as a youth, would often comment, "You better enjoy that while you can, you won't get to do that forever."  At the time, couldn't fathom what she was talking about, andI don't know that it would have mattered if I had.  I have come to believe that as humans, we can have no genuine appreciation for something until it is gone.  Cases in point:

I graduated from a school in Eastern Oregon that was VERY small.  There were ten kids in the high school, and only three in my graduating class (one of which was my sister, who graduated a year early).  As a Junior, I spent the year lamenting the injustices of attending a school so small, vowing to leave that little one-horse town and never return, and questioning the sanity of the people who lived there.  Now, 20 years later, I find the town charming and I have a retirement fantasy of owning a home there.  At the time, maybe because I didn't have a choice as to whether or not I was going to live there, I could find very little to love about it.  Now, however, I can appreciate the beauty of the small town, nestled (literally) in the Blue Mountains.  I love that the people I know still living there are genuine, friendly to a fault, and content--they don't need no stinking city!!

Later on, when my kids were young (ages 4 and 9), getting them up and out of the house each morning was sometimes akin to summiting the peak of a small mountain.  Many days I would get to work, collapse on Teresa's couch, and say something to the effect of, "Today I just wanted to put a brick on the gas pedal, point the Suburban toward a telephone pole, and jump from the rig. Getting here today was HORRIBLE."  She would laugh, let me vent, and then she would say, "I know it's hard, but they grow so fast, someday you are going to look back at these times and you will miss them."  Dammit, she was right.  And not just because she is a touchy-feely social worker, but because at the time she had two high-school aged boys of her own.  She knew that eventually I would miss those times because she, herself, had been there and done that, and knew that once it was gone, you can't get it back.

So the moral of the story is: insomuch as you can, appreciate the trials and the experiences in life as you are experiencing them.  Nostalgia is best served with contentment, so to be able to look back over your life experiences and recall that you enjoyed the event to it's fullest is one of the sweetest gifts of all.  There have been many times where I would find myself in that familiar mindset of "I just can't wait until this is behind me," and I recall that I used to think that way about the various developmental stages of my children.  And now I do, indeed, miss those times.  I don't want to undervalue any of my life experiences as I believe that at some point in the future, I will think back to the present day with a touch of longing and wistfulness.  What I don't want to feel is regret--both for my actions, or for my attitude, so I try to appreciate each moment--even (and especially) the crappy ones.  You just don't get those back.

To that end, I shall rejoice then, in my dairy-free, grain-free, caffeine-free diet that keeps my stomach and digestive track from rebelling day and night.  While I think, at times, that it couldn't get worse than this, somehow I suspect that it could.  I am sure that someone with Crohn's Disease could shed a little light on the injustice that I perceive.  And for any of you girls in your 20s, or for those who have the benefit of a digestive track that has NOT YET broken down, drink a milkshake and eat a cheese burger for ME!!!!  And wait, it might happen to you too if you are expecting to turn 40 someday!