Aging

Please forgive the self-centered post.

All my life I have looked young. People would always do a double take when they found out my age in disbelief. Jeremy was always accused of robbing the cradle and when we first moved to Virginia a church member mistook me for a 13 year old, when in fact, I was the 13 year olds Sunday school teacher. It used to be that people could not believe I was old enough to be married (I was in fact a young bride), then people could not believe that I had a baby, and having more than one child was out of the question! I remember being annoyed at the constant comments and people would say, one day you will be glad you look so young. I suppose that day has come. Now that I am 30 (gasp!) I am much more self-conscious about how old I look. Do I dress too young? I bought the headband in the photo above and actually had to contemplate if it was an attempt to rewind the clock and look more girlish and not so much adultish. I think the answer was yes, but I don't care. I find myself studying my face in the mirror for signs of wrinkles and buying creams to help slow the inevitable process taking over my body. The worst thing of all? The comments have stopped. Completely. I no longer get the second glances when confessing my age or talking about my three children. What happened apparently overnight? Tonight I was talking with the pregnant girl behind the counter at the Target pharmacy, congratulating her on her first baby when she looked in my wallet at a photo I have of our three boys. She asked if they were mine and as I responded I waited to hear that familiar response, "You don't look old enough to have three kids already!" It never came. When did I bridge that age gap and all of a sudden claim my thirty year old appearance? I can hear the responses now, "you're not that old!" Well, to those of you older you're right, but to those younger I am, and I'm not ready to act the way I look. I still feel like I am not so far removed from my college or even high school years. Can't I still hang with the teenagers and still be considered "cool?" Is this what it's like to get old, you are always wishing you were younger? I don't know why I can't just enjoy the stage I'm in at the time, isn't 30 pretty awesome? Guess what, now that I'm here it is.