A Little Old

It's 2013. 

I was never big in to celebrating New Year's Eve when I had total freedom to do so, and so it isn't a big surprise that the last day of 2012 was spent de-Christmassing the house and head-counting powdered sugared little kids at the Bakkerij. We all ate too many olie bollen before coming home to find something green to eat. We missed Oma. 

We found a babysitter at the last minute to hold down the couch while the kids slept, and Derek and I played a lopsided game of Hand and Foot with my sister and brother-in-law and their last pack of cigarettes. We watched the clock, not in excitement for the ticking toward midnight and the dawn of a new year, but in calculation of how much we'd owe the sitter. (At one point I actually keyed the text: "Hi, Kennedy, it's Mrs. Pomp." I admit, this was the day's most sobering moment.) We left at 11:30, and as the clock struck twelve I was pulling out of my babysitter's driveway in a gold Ford Taurus. The night was topped off by coming home to nurse the youngest of my four children back to sleep.

Yes, this one.

The thing is, so many things I could mention in description of the day would make my former, younger, cooler self recoil in disgust and determination to avoid such a fate. It doesn't feel that way now. No matter how many times I start to say, "Wow, I feel old," I can't say it in dread or defeat. It just is. I get another day, and I know more now. How could I be dissatisfied?