Ten quick thoughts about age and change

because I'm supposed to be doing admin

Jardin Sous la Pluie by Ceri Richards, 1967

I was just thinking that if you’d told me when I was 25, or even 35, that I would one day walk around the garden after rain feeling really happy for the plants - like, a sort of primitive joy on their behalf - I’d have snorted laughing.

Which got me to thinking yet again of the ways getting older changes you, though I’m not sure it’s getting older so much as becoming completely comfortable in your skin. Except that becoming completely comfortable in your skin is a byproduct of age, I think. And therapy. Anyway: then I thought of a few more things, and here they are.

1. I’d have been pretty startled at 25 if someone had said ‘you will have three children and wish you’d had a couple more’. As I’ve said before, the idea that you always know you want children, that you’re the ‘type’, seems strange to me. I didn’t have strong feelings either way until they came along.