From this day forward all moments are senior

Somewhere between last week and this week, I became a senior citizen. It wasn’t easy and admittedly, I should have been watching the signs more closely.

Looking back, the tip off for my impending seniority should have been the AARP letters that began arriving in my mailbox on a weekly basis some years back, but I let that slide telling myself they had the real and fantastically youthful me mixed up with some over-the-hill person.

“I’m not old,” I said convincingly, not realizing that my aversion to all things Will Farrell, most prime time shows as well as reality television, was due to individualism that comes with age and not the dumbing-down of America.

Well, I was partially correct in that respect. There were also the clothing fads that had me saying, “exactly why would anyone wear this?” You know, the jeans that fit so tight you can barely get a big toe in there let alone a leg, and so low the pubic area has no defense against the elements? And I never quite got on board with the manly fashion statement of sliding the waist of one’s trousers down to one’s thighs. Again, I chalked all of this up to snarky designers who knew how to promote the uncomfortable and inane as fashion.

One look in the mirror, however, should have been a definite clue. Somewhere between then and now, those cute little lines peppered across my face became massive crow’s feet and lip crevices that defy every pro-biotic Retinol-A wrinkle cream on the market. Despite what lotion and potion marketing strategists claim, the best wrinkle agents are the dark of night and dim of light.

My hair should have blown the cover on my youthful masquerade, but there again I viewed the constant flux of color changes as a mark of independence, rebellion and freedom not a fruitless effort to hide the gray. Although I’m never sure what color my hair will be next, I can guarantee it rarely looks like the fresh, hauntingly beautiful locks depicted on the box. I even convinced myself that my strange desire to color, straighten, curl, cut, and grow my tresses was simply a woman’s prerogative and had nothing to do with an unconscious desire to look younger.

Like I said, all the signs were there elbowing me to wake up and smell the old-timer coffee but I remained clueless until one fateful late night when I flipped open a Denny’s menu and discovered, at the ripe age of 55, I had crossed over to senior breakfast land.

No joke.

“I can order from the senior menu,” I stammered to my husband.

“That can’t be right.” He reached for his cell phone calculator and punched in some numbers. His eyes went saucer-like. “I’ll be 57 this May,” he muttered. We stared at each other in disbelief.

The waitress appeared with pen in hand. “Give us a minute here,” I said, “I think we’re having a senior moment.”

This discovery prompted a lot of laughter but, as we realized the next and final chapter of our lives was dawning, this discovery also prompted a lot of talk.

We spoke of our goal to travel the country only this time it was in the present tense not the distant future and as we talked, we remembered the annual RV show was fast approaching. The excitement of what lay ahead dazzled before us like dreams coated in Disney fairy dust and, as everyone knows, once fairy dust of the Disney variety combines with dreams, they really do come true. The goals we had kicked aside for too long are now on the horizon and we’re reaching toward them with outstretched arms.

Somewhere between last week and this week I discovered I was tottering precariously on the senior side of life but, more importantly, I discovered the best is yet to come.