Patchwork by Donna Smith Ammons - December 30, 2009

The year 2010 is just around the corner. Baby-boomers cannot believe it....because a monumentous birthday is slowly creeping up. I, personally, am not going to have any more birthdays and I don’t want to think about it!! Perhaps this is the year for an un-birthday...with presents welcome!!

A friend of mine said he went to his high school reunion in the fall and wondered who were all those old people dancing and greeting him. Suddenly he began recognizing them...and realized he was one of them.

I can identify with that. Sometimes there’s an old woman looking at me in the mirror.

Why, I wonder, do our bodies wrinkle and our pace becomes slow when we begin entering the retirement years of our lives. This is the time we should be enjoying life...feeling good, traveling, kicking up our feet.

Many are just sitting around aching and complaining of not being able to read small print or hear the television. We have too much medicine to take and we are real interested in some shut-eye come 9 p.m. Whatever happened to our get-up-and-go? It got up and went, some say.

Why do I still feel young inside? In my mind, I could dance all night. I still have a smidgen of invincibility in me. I can do anything....or I used to anyway.

I can be up one minute and down the next!! When an older person calls me “Honey”, I feel like a kid...and then a Boy Scout comes along and helps me cross the street and I feel like an old woman. Isn’t there an in-between? That’s where I want to be.

I think Peter Pan had a pretty good idea. He wouldn’t grow up and I don’t think I will either!!