Girls, Girls, Girls

Okay, I know that title got someone’s attention. More than Old Ladies, Old Ladies, Old Ladies might have at any rate.

This past weekend was a “girls’ weekend” with my cousins. None of us are spring chickens. We all called ourselves old ladies multiple times during conversations. Sometimes bemoaning certain facts of our age, sometimes just busting on each other, sometimes, well, sometimes because, to those who are younger, this is exactly what we are.

Yet, despite the age-related aches and pains, the gray in our hair (although not all have it–I’m looking at you, Rene), the knowledge and recognition that more time has passed behind us than we can possibly have ahead, I don’t view any of us as “old.”

Seasoned, maybe. Experienced in life. Of a different generation to those who are younger and those who came before us and knew a life we never will.

Older but wiser. Older but not defeated.

Because in honesty, a lot has occurred in all our years which could have taken us down physically, emotionally, mentally. We fight on. We have always fought on.

Women are strong. They really are. That old term “the weaker sex” angered me even when I was a child. It was a term to make us feel lesser. When my younger self railed against it (not so much anymore, because people aren’t foolish enough to use that term, or at least not around me), I was given excuses for why it was said, all of them, including the “women don’t have upper body strength” pronouncement, bandied about as if something in this misguided reasoning possibly made us unequal to the struggles and joys that are life. Really? Wear blinders, much, people?

Anyway–yes, yes, I’ve digressed, as usual–I’d like to point out I feel neither old nor regretful, but fortunate. My mother passed when I was fourteen years of age. She didn’t have the chance to grow “old.” The chance to experience so many changes, in herself, in the world around her. I revel in all I’ve learned, for good or bad, and will continue to learn. All I’ve seen and will continue to see. Everyone I’ve loved, and will continue to love, or learn to love, or forget to love, or turn away from. We are who we are. Our lives have made us in every moment spent ALIVE.

Every second I breathe on this side of the grass is another chance to learn something new, see something so lovely it fills me with joy, or so tragic anger and sorrow nearly consume me. There are still things to fight for. Still people and places to enjoy, defend, care about. Each new sunrise, every sunset, all the seconds in between, present opportunities for life, for living, for new memories that, yes, I may forget, but which still fill me with the essence of who and what I am, and who I can still be. Sharing these moments with family and friends completes the embracing circle.

To me, such was this girls’ weekend, what it was about, more than anything. Making new memories with the “just cuz sisters” (I made tote bags for the cousin sisterhood saying that) and remembering the past. All those moments add more to who we are, make us the special women we’ve become, gray hair and all. Not old. Never old.

Just who we’ve grown to be.