I don't feel older. Part of my brain says I should object, now that I have a child rapidly approaching 30 years of age. But the larger part of my brain just doesn't seem to care.

My family does not tend toward deep emotional conversations. It's not that we aren't close, we just pick light topics. Ourselves and what we're doing, the weather, any particular sports we did or watched. And we don't often talk about people that aren't there. No gossip (which is fine) but not much reminiscing either. Which may be why it stuck in my mind, when my father talked about his father. We were talking about ourselves, and, not surprisingly, our ages. According to my Dad, Grandpa had said something Dad didn't understand at the time, but does now.

"I don't feel any age at all" said Grandpa.

I'm not sure how old Dad was when he heard this, but at 51, I certainly understand what Grandpa said.

I remember when I felt young. I remember when I began to enter adulthood, and felt, alternately, that I was coming into my own and/or that I had no idea what I was doing. But the older I got, the less I felt it. I mean emotionally. There are days when I feel old physically. But those days, oddly, are fewer in number than they were five years ago. And I still make sure the youngsters in the crowd know my age, so they know that the "old guy" is keeping up with them.

As Grandpa said, I don't feel any age at all.

I often feel vibrant and passionate, but it's not the vibrance and passion of youth. I often feel competent and experienced and (more rarely) wise, but it's not the wisdom of old age. I just feel like me - feel like I've always been this way, though I know I haven't. Feel that it could go on forever, though I know it won't.

Neither my body nor my mind hold me back much from what I want to do. (My bank balance does a good job of that.)

I wonder, casually, if I will ever feel old. I wonder if I will feel that life is beyond me - that it can't be what I want it to be. But maybe that's the "infirm" part of the phrase "old and infirm" and not the "old" part.

I like how I feel - I like not being an age.