Aging

In filling out an on-line form which required my age, it seemed like it took far too long to scroll down to the year of my birth. Despite the fact that I'm only 30 years old, it does seem to be just that - old. Nothing in life truly prepares a person to deal with aging. One morning you wake up and look in the mirror realizing that the wrinkles are accumulating more rapidly, the number of white hairs increase and the aches and pains don't fade as quickly. What's worse is watching the aging of one's parents. My mother will be 60 next year. I've decided that we need to take a trip (just she and I, and maybe my sister) since in my mother's 60 years, she really hasn't travelled anywhere beyond the east coast of the U.S. There is so much to see and learn from environments outside of the familiar. Mom is intrigued by the idea of going to Ireland, primarily because her work companions have travelled there and enjoyed it. I would like to show her Paris, but she worries about the language barrier. In a past sojourn to France, the language barrier was not altogether difficult, except that my husband and I were blatantly "stupid Americans." Perhaps the French were more kind to us given that we visited their country just a few weeks following the 9/11 attacks. I tell my Mom she would fit in in France because she looks French. Although my maternal ancestors just a few generations prior were from Canada, I'm sure somewhere along the line someone took a boat over from France. My mother isn't the most confident person in the world. In fact, I think that my lack of self-confidence and esteem were carefully learned by example - not that my Mom intentionally taught this trait, or had any real conscious control over this transferrence. I've tried to live life overcoming this confidence obstacle. As we age, our roles with our parents gradually reverse. I feel obligated to assume the role of teaching my mother and perhaps showing her the world. Reflecting back, perhaps that's what I expected my parental figures to do for me. We didn't have the grand family cross country trips or foreign getaways. Am I resentful? No. The course my life has taken has taken made me what I am and will channel what I become. The obstacles and challenges were and are there for a reason.