What Keeps You From Feeling Your Age?

September 19, 2014 by Linda G. Hill 50 Comments

I stood at the kitchen counter yesterday, stirring Christopher’s medicine into his orange juice and I remembered learning to stir for the first time; I might have been three or four years old. It came back to me in a flash. My senses all conspired to bring me there: the sound of the spoon clinking around the inside the glass, the feel of the circular motion and the sight of my fingers manipulating the spoon in a way I no longer need to concentrate on.

Sometimes it’s the smell of freshly mowed grass, just as I recall it wafting in my bedroom window when my dad went out to mow the lawn before an early game of golf on a Sunday morning that takes me back. Or the taste of a shortbread cookie, dipped in a cup of tea.

Though many of my memories take me back to my childhood there is something inside me that refuses to believe I’m more than half my actual age. Despite my aches, the deterioration of my eyesight, and my inability to react as quickly as I used to, in my mind I can’t possibly be 50 years old.

They say that children keep us young as long as we can remember how to play.  For some it’s staying active, both in body and mind. I’m sure those memories that return as though they were only yesterday must have an influence on how we feel.

I hear people, all the time, say they don’t feel as old as the calendar tells them they must be.

What keeps you from feeling your age?