Everything Old is New Again

“Sooner or later, everything old is new again—Stephen King

Lately, I can’t seem to wrap my head around this “time” and “getting older” thing. Calling myself a time traveler is an overstatement, but it’s the best construct I can find. I’m at my coffee shop office and next thing I know I’m feeling emotions that are tied to an event when I was 5. I’m a little girl, with bangs cut straight across my forehead and big blue eyes, and I’m staring at the black board waiting for my brain to click on putting letters into words into sentences. And yesterday becomes today and I’m still struggling to put letters into words into sentences. My eyes are still blue, but today my hair is gray and I need glasses to read that black board. Am I 5 or 69? What if “years” is only one way to measure time? Einstein could help me  if I could just understand the space time continuum he theorized, but I’m limited to what my small mind can understand. Even if I could understand, I’d still have to live my life in whatever order it comes in.

Last night I was listening to music in bed, and if you read my previous post on Rod Stewart you’d know I was listening to his music. Of course I had to get up and go to the bathroom and as I navigated in the dark I had a flash of insight. I’m listening to Rod Stewart today and I started listening to him in my twenties. I have the same ears and brain I had in my twenties, but I know I hear and feel his music differently at 69 than I did at 20. That flash of insight I experienced? Rod Stewart looks like my “bad boy” from my twenties! I actually chuckled and said out loud ”Well it’s about time you figured that out!” It certainly is. The old me is new again. I should tell Rod about my insight….

I time travel the most in my relationship with my son. Being older myself, and of course knowing Tyler is older, doesn’t stop me from going back and forth to earlier times. Tyler is the sum total of all of his years and so am I. Sometimes I experience mothering a Tyler who is 5 or being a mother who is 40. I can be brought up short by words that come out of my mouth that seem out of time, from emotions that originate from years before. And I don’t have dementia. Time may be more of a spiral than a straight line and the spirals overlap. I’d like to think that my emotions are as mature as I am, but in a “debate” with Tyler I can get very immature. I’m a grown up, but you may catch me feeling and acting like a child in spite of my calendar birthday.  I know our bodies are older than our minds. Our outsides, our bodies, and our insides like our brain, heart and soul don’t usually match. This is why we often say “I don’t feel that old.” or “Who is that old person in the mirror?” Sometimes I even think that Tyler may be older than me in some ways. One thing I know for sure is that Tyler and I renew our relationship each time we interact.

new: recently born, built, or created; being other than the former or old; having been in a relationship or condition but a short time; made or become fresh. 

When we talk about fashion we often think that a lot of what is old becomes new again. The clothes we wore in the 70’s and 80’s have come back into fashion again. Bell bottoms are a good example of fashion being recycled. So if the clothes I wore as a young adult are new again can’t I be recycled into something new. We talk about being born again or re-born and that is surely “new”. When we create things we are bringing into existence something that has not existed before, a new thing or idea. Whichever definition of new we use, if we are constantly creating and building our lives, then we are not truly “old”. I intend to renew my life daily.