Half a century

I've been alive for half of a century. Only God knows what fraction of my life here on earth I have already lived, but I assume I am past the half-way mark. 

When I turned ten, I was a fourth grader at Grace Christian School in Bowie, Maryland and had two sisters. We had moved from Texas to Maryland the previous summer. Our family attended Belcroft Bible Church.

When I turned twenty, I was student teaching in a middle school in Dayton, Ohio. I graduated from college a few weeks after I turned twenty, and in the fall of 1992, I began my career in education as a middle school teacher in Maryland. I had two sisters and a brother and was driving a Toyota Tercel. This was the only vehicle that I've owned that had manual transmission and didn't have air conditioning. I was singing in the choir of a Baptist church in Cedarville, Ohio. It cost about $1 to buy a gallon of gas. I was accustomed to having a cat as a pet.

When I turned thirty, I had been married for eight months and was living in a house in Pottsville, Pennsylvania that I had purchased 15 months earlier. I was the principal of a Christian school and was working on my dissertation at IUP. I graduated with my doctorate at the end of 2002. I was driving a Toyota Corolla. Paul and I went on two vacations in 2002; we spent two weeks in England/France and ten days in Mexico. I was a member of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Cressona.

When I turned forty, I was pregnant with Oliver, the mother of a three-year-old girl and a two-year-old son, and a tenured Associate Professor at Bloomsburg University. We had lived in our home in Watsontown for about 3.5 years. I was driving a red Toyota Prius, but in September 2012 I began driving a Toyota Sienna. I was a member of First Baptist Church in Milton.

At the age of fifty, I am a homeschooling mom of three kids between the ages of nine and thirteen. We have two two-year-old female guinea pigs and a male eighteen-month-old Bichon Frise. My youngest now sits beside me in church, fills in the sermon outline, and writes me messages like "Mom, I love you so, so much" on the bulletin. Nadia has three weeks left of middle school as she'll be entering high school this fall. I'm entering a new decade without my brother, mother, or mother-in-law. Over the last decade the type of gifts I ask request for my birthday and Christmas has changed. Paul used to get me good jewelry, but over the at least last five years I've preferred to receive things like a new sink faucet (my 45th birthday gift). Dad and Margie are giving me a new door for our home for my birthday this year, which is something I'm very, very grateful to receive at this stage of life. I'm currently a member of Christ Wesleyan Church in Milton. During the past decade my skills in photography improved dramatically. I used to enjoy riding almost every ride at an amusement park, but over the last decade that changed dramatically. Now I ride very few rides and instead prefer to take pictures of my kids on the rides. I'm driving a Honda Odyssey, our second minivan and my first vehicle with heated seats. It costs over $4 to buy a gallon of gas. Over the last decade we purchased our first iPad, Kindle, and smart phones. In addition to photography, I feel that I also expanded my skills in the kitchen over the past ten years. Most of my life I never raised my hands in worship, but over the last few years I have begun to do so. 

If I live to see my sixtieth birthday, I might have an empty nest as Oliver will probably graduate from high school in May of 2031. Milo could still be alive. I have no idea what all will happen over the next ten years, should the Lord tarry, but I want to soak up every minute that I can with my kids as the years that they live under our roof are numbered. I gained some weight over the last two years so I'm hoping I weigh less when I turn sixty than I do now. Lord willing, we will have achieved our goals of visiting all fifty states, gone on a short-term mission trip together, and the kids will each have earned at least 200 Junior Ranger badges before I enter another decade. I'm also hoping I will have achieved my goal of speaking Spanish fluently in the next few years. Although I would love to become a grandma at some point, there's a good chance that will not happen until after I turn sixty.

I think that physical changes are more significant between ages 40-50 than from 30-40 although some of it has more to do with my ankle surgery. Here are some of the changes I have noticed over the last ten years.

• I now wear bifocal glasses. Even with the magnification, I can read things that are close up more easily without my glasses, so in the last several months I've gotten in the habit of taking them off and on many times a day. For about 30 years of my life, I had worn contact lenses. 
• My height has shrunk about 1/2 inch, and my shoe size has also gone down 1/2 size.
• It probably has more to do with three pregnancies than age but sneezing or jumping can cause bladder issues.
• I've had numbness in my hands due to carpal tunnel since my mid 30's, but in the last few years the numbness has spread to my elbows. This happens most frequently when I am sleeping.
• Sleeping in bed became a painful experience for my back around age 36, and it has only gotten worse over the last decade.
• Perimenopause
• My skin is getting thinner. In particular, my hands are prone to bleeding more easily. 
• More grey hair or "old" hair as Oliver calls it. Thankfully my hair is not turning grey as early as mom's hair did.
• My short-term memory is not what it used to be. I also am far more prone to saying the wrong name. I rarely do this with Nadia's name, but I often mix around Oliver, Ian, and Milo's names. 
• Due to the plate in my ankle, I think my days of ice skating and snow skiing are permanently over. 
• I've been nervous about walking on icy roads or sidewalks for about 30 years because I had two previous falls (concussion when I was in college and then another bad spill when I was a principal), but due to my fall in September, my fear of falling has grown exponentially. I gladly hold on to someone else if there is any ice or even water on the ground.
• I'm by nature a "Type A" personality, but I've definitely chilled out some over the last decade. I think the pandemic played a role in this. Maybe there are times I should be more motivated (ex. I didn't have my kids participate in the Living History homeschool fair in February), but in general I feel that being more relaxed and not filling our calendar quite as much is a good thing. 
• I'm entering this decade with a right elbow that is in pain every day from all the weight bearing I did with my arm while my right leg was out of commission. Thankfully the pain has been decreasing recently.
• I'm also still dealing with ankle pain and swelling in my right foot which means I spend far more time sitting in a recliner than I ever have at any other point in my life. Hopefully before I turn 51, I'll feel like I've returned back to normal in terms of being able to stand and walk without tightness/pain.  Thankfully the massage therapy has been helping me make progress.
• Up until Nadia was born, I didn't have trouble falling back asleep during the night. This was a big problem when I was nursing each of my children during the night. Since Oliver was weaned, I had a few years where I could again fall back to sleep easily during the night. Unfortunately, it's again a lot more challenging to fall back asleep. Sometimes I get up much earlier than I really want to get up just because I can't fall back asleep even though I'm still tired. 

One other change that I've noticed over the last several years is that for the first time in my life I find myself thinking that I prefer how things were in previous decades. I realize we have had many technological advantages. For example, I enjoy being able to take pictures with my smart phone and the fact that my vehicle has many features that didn't exist in previous decades. Communicating with a sister who lives in another country is much easier now than it would have been thirty years ago. But I could list many ways I think life was better a few decades ago than it is now. Appliances were built to last for far more years. Biological males didn't compete in women's sports. Freedom of speech wasn't so frequently taken away here in the USA. And the list could go on and on. Sometimes it has more to do with matters of taste rather than values. For example, I find myself longing to sing music in church that more closely resembles what we sang in previous decades. 

Some years we have not done anything to celebrate my birthday, but that is not the case this year. I've never received a birthday gift from one of the kids before, but this year Nadia and Ian together paid for a $10 Kindle book for me. I haven't been with a sibling near my birthday in I can't remember how many years, but Wendy took me out for dinner last week as an early birthday celebration. Nadia needed some new clothes for our vacation, and most things are 50% off at the thrift store on Wednesdays. We hadn't been there since last summer. Yeseterday afternoon I took the kids to the thrift store and then we used a coupon for a free birthday meal at Red Robin when the kids and I had dinner at Red Robin before we went to church. My friend Cheri, who turned 65 in January, is planning to take me out to lunch next Monday while the kids are at gym class. And I made plans for the five of us (plus Paul's dad) to spend some time in Lancaster today. We have tickets to see David at Sight and Sound, and we're planning to have lunch at Shady Maple (a first for Paul and the kids), tour the replica of the Tabernacle, and tour Wheatland, the home of President Buchanan. I had made similar plans for April 21, 2020 (Esther instead of David), but those were cancelled because of COVID. It seems far more probable the plans will actually come to fruition today. I'm thankful for the fifty years that the Lord has given me so far. Knowing my brother only made it to his 35th birthday, I don't take these years for granted. If I were to live as long as my mother did, I would have 21 more years left to live. I hope to use whatever time the Lord gives me wisely.