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3/8/1999 Myself, Getting OlderToday it is cold out, and windy. I didn't bother taking the boys out for a walk because Stephen is still getting over a mild cold. I think February was warmer than March has been so far. The only good thing is that the days are noticeably longer. Tonight when we picked Tab up at about 6:00, it was still fairly light out. I wonder if I have some mild version of Seasonal Affective Disorder. The return of the sun and the longer days of spring and summer cheer me in some primal way. I felt unreasonably happy all day, even tolerant of the boys' fights and whininess. Tab's birthday yesterday started me thinking about aging, specifically my aging. I look in the mirror and I can see both the vestige of the young girl I once was and the shadow of the old woman I will become. Right now I'm poised exactly between the girl and the old woman. I have trouble, sometimes, remembering my age. I'm as likely to say I'm 36 or 38 as 37. When I was young, I always knew to the month how old I was. Last week, I overheard Daniel tell a mother at the park that he was "5 and three quarters." I used to do that. Strangely, my mental age is still about 25. Occasionally I'll read an article about someone who has been out of college for a few years, and I'll catch myself thinking of that person as my contemporary instead of someone more than a decade younger than me. Maybe it is because when I was young, I thought 25 was the age to be. I remember my mother when she was 25, and I longed to be the same age as her. And to what generation do I belong? I've seen Baby Boomers defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, which would include me, but I never felt that I was part of that demographic. When Douglas Coupland published Generation X in 1991, I was 29 and thus fell within his definition of a Generation Xer as someone in his or her 20s. But when the term is used now, it seems to refer to those currently in their late teens to late 20s. Once again, those of us born in the early 60s do not fit in. So what are we? Post-Boomers? Generation W? The past ten years have passed more than twice as quickly as my first twenty. I guess this is one reason for my journal. I am trying to capture the moments of my life as they flow by, an experience akin to trying to fill a paper cup from Niagara Falls. At the very least, I will preserve some of what I am experiencing at this point in my life, and some of my sons' early years.
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