My daughter and I both have a celebrity crush, on the same celebrity. This morning while taking her to school I asked if she would seriously date him if he ever in "real life" asked. She said, "No way, he is too old." I tossed out equally handsome celebrity names (that happen to be roughly my age) at her and she said no to all.
She told me she would not date anyone even a year older than she is.
I reminded my daughter that her father and I were eleven years apart and I was in my twenties when we met. This she blew off as being okay.
To someone her age there is a time when all people just fall in to the category of "old".
Being someone that has primarily dated older than my own age, it has never once occurred to me date younger.
I have in the last few months, gone out to a bar with a friend of mine who I think of as being "my age". At the bar that thought does change as I see her engage in behavior I gave up long ago. I am reminded of the fact that I am the older person, and usually I feel out of place even being there.
Then I have friends who are young enough to be my children (almost) and we have connected on such a deep level that I feel no time separates us at all.
When I see someone who is young and attractive I do not immediately wish I was younger so I could go after them. I am more likely to compare them to how I was at their age.
I am about to turn forty-four. To some that is young, to others it is old.
When comparing ages I have discovered that some ages I have never been.
I have never been the same age as my friend. I have never been the thirty-one year old that she is. At thirty-one I had five children under the age of 10. My youngest was born when I was thirty-one. My husband was diagnosed with cancer when I was thirty-one. I was taking care of my entire family and timing trips to the grocery store on when the baby had last nursed and my husband had last taken his medications.
I did not go to one single club when I was thirty-one. I would have laughed or cried at the thought. My clubbing days were long over by then.
I have never been a single woman without children since college. I do not know what it is like to only have to care for myself, or entertain the thought of bringing anyone home to my bed at any time.
I do wonder what it is like to be her age. She will also never know my age.
A young woman in her twenties was able to bring me to tears with her powerful words spoken on a stage. I did not see her outer casing, I saw her mind and was in awe of it. Immediately I fell for her, but it is her mind I love. The fact that she is attractive is superfluous to the emotions evoked by her thoughts. This is a crush of sorts, but not one I would ever entertain because she is so young in numbers.
My thirty-one year old friend can sit with me and discuss with intelligence the world, our careers, and the follies of others that we both know. In those moments I think of us as being the same age.
I do not really have many friends that are exactly the same age as I am. I have some that are ten to twenty years older, and some that are ten to twenty years my junior.
I wonder why I would not entertain dating someone younger than I am? A fear of sexual immaturity? Not being of equal intelligence? That was proven wrong by my poet friend. She surpasses me in that category. Not being financially established? My thirty-one year old friend is more focused career wise than I was at her age. I had no career outside of wife and mother.
Would I feel the things I desire to feel in someones arms who is younger than I am? I have no idea, I have always chosen close to or older.
At what point does age actually matter? I was once told that it was embarrassing how I was laughing with a coworker who was young enough (again, almost) to be my daughter. The person saying this to me added, "You are my peer not hers." She herself was older than I was. And now, years later it is the younger one I remain close to. The younger one who chose me to be with her when she delivered her first child.
I refer to all of my friends as "my age". If there is a commonality that bonds us together, than age is of no importance.
She is thirty-one and makes me laugh. She is fifty-two and let's me cry. He would have been fifty-four and stole my heart. She is twenty-two and I bow to her visions. She is twenty-five and feels like my twin. She is in her sixties and we are kindred souls.
If you want to peel off the sheets, turn on the lights and examine the age of the body you will lose the connection of the heart.
At some point we are all more than our numbers. We are all simply; people.
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