Three times in my life I've had an age epiphany: a sudden perception-shifting gut understanding of what age I was at that moment. Each time, the moment has been permanently backed up in my memories; I can recall my surroundings clearly and with sensory effects.
Had one such "ah ha" this morning.
The first time was in 1959. I was riding in the car with my dad, and as he talked about something that had happened a year ago, I sensed for the very first time just how long a year was. Until that moment, I lived in child time, without any real understanding of just how long days, months or years were. But, suddenly, sitting in the passenger seat that day, I knew the concept of "year." And, I knew that I was ten years old not just as a number, but as ten of those now tangible years.
A disconnect came with this awareness, a severing of a sort between the ten-"year"-old me and all the years of me up till then. I could look back on those before years and know that they were behind me and that I was done with their needs. I was ten now and I was aware; I was someone different than who I was when that car ride started.
The second time was in 1974. Laying in bed, just waking up on my birthday and enjoying the late spring light and air, I felt that sudden awareness again. I was 25 that day and I felt, truly felt, my adulthood for the first time. Looking behind me, I saw my teen-aged self not as just the girl yesterday, but as someone more than a step behind. A younger adult, doing adult things for the first time, stood between that girl and me, laying there in bed. The younger adult was behind me, too; I was familiar with everyday adult thoughts and acts now, and if I were still young, I was not so innocent anymore. I laid in bed a while longer, examining these boundaries behind me, trying to skip back to my other selves, but they stood firm in who they were and not about to be dislodged. I got up from bed to get dressed for work as someone new, someone very aware that a quarter century had passed and just how long that was.
Today, I had parked the car in the small Seattle Center garage that is tucked away south of the Coliseum and was walking over to the Folklife Festival office for a day's volunteer work, when I suddenly found myself full of 60 years. It's actually about three days till I literally turn 60, but what's 75 hours at this point of life? I'm 60 and this morning all those years fell into place and occupied me. It felt good, too, satisfying, and not old, just -- appropriate. As during the other two times, the people I was, who are behind me now, have boundaries that don't tolerate fence-jumping. I am looking forward once again.
Looking back (I can still look back), I suspect that one reason I felt so out-of-sorts in my 40s is that there wasn't any experience of then/now during those years. I could tell myself how old I was, but I never really felt any boundary set between 39 and 40, or 49 and 50. The last few years have been particularly hard, feeling like there had to be a door here, somewhere, but not finding it and falling back, exhausted and not giving a damn.
But today is different.