This past August though, as my birthday drew near, I felt something nag at me. I studied myself in a mirror.  I searched every tiny crevice time has stamped upon my face, but the answer wasn’t there.  Long ago I realized there are good days and there are bad days.  On good days, the lines are there, I just don’t notice them. 

Was I worried about being attractive to men?  After all, as a late bloomer, I had a short window.  I tried to remember the last time I stopped a car, or just caused one to slow down.  It seemed it had been a while.  There was a time in my late thirties and early forties when I could still attract a man eligible for coverage under his parent’s insurance policy.  Those are generally the ones who stop.  After all, it’s easier to hang your head out the window and/or yell “Baby” over the din of Atlanta traffic if you stop the car first.

Then I remembered a day not so long ago when it rained, as per usual, during rush hour.  About half my drive is bumper-to-bumper, and on this particular day the two men in the front seat of the car to my left seemed determined to get my attention.  There’s a certain look in a man’s eyes when he’s hoping to catch yours.  These guys had probably switched insurance companies a number of times.  They may have even added dependents.  That’s okay.  They still had eyes.  It felt good.  Some days, I’ve still got it.

I am bothered by a sudden sense of the finite, the certainty that you’re over halfway through, the knowledge that there’s less left than you’ve already lived.  It’s as though one day you think, as you have for the preceding decades, “I’ll get to it.”, and the next you wistfully wish you had. 

And then it hit me.  It wasn’t about me.  It’s about them, the people who pepper my life; the ones who listen, the ones who’ve been there, the ones who know me and love me anyway.  Because, I’m not the only one getting older. 

One of my closest friends is eighty-six.  She still works three days a week and puts dinner on the table for her husband every night at seven PM;  not six, not seven-thirty, always seven PM.  Four times a year, she drives her 1996 Toyota Corolla over 200 miles, alone, to see her daughter in Tennessee.  She is blessed with a sharp mind, a keen wit, and a nose for good perfume.  But…realistically..for how long?

Another friend is sixty-five.  We joked, for years, that she was old enough to be my mother.  She loves to eat, she loves to read, and she loves her grandchildren.  Despite medication, her blood pressure often peaks to stroke level, and a valve in her heart isn’t working.  She should have surgery but she already owes the cardiologist money she’ll never be able to pay.  Sometimes she doesn’t hear the ring on her new smartphone which she describes as “good for everything but making telephone calls”.  When she doesn’t answer, my first instinct is to joke with her about it.  But what if it isn’t a joke?  What if she doesn’t answer because she can’t and never will?  I don’t leave a message.  I call back later. 

I resent having to think about these things.  It’s one thing to face my eventual demise.  I can put that away.  When it pops to the surface I can push it down with a sense of purpose.  After all, I’m healthy.  I’m active.  I’m doing the things I can to prevent the outcomes I dread.

But, I can’t do that with the others.  The folds around my friend’s seawater-green eyes remind me.  The sound of exertion as she painfully plods towards the entrance to the grocery store worries me.  The certainty that one day they won’t be there saddens me. 

So I do the only thing I can do. 

I love them.

Now.