How old am I?

[Bubba's Dad]

I see you all have a thread on here about age, and it got me thinking. How old am I? I feel old some day, but I feel like a kid when I am around my dad or mom. I am old enough to remember seeing "Grease" and "Star wars"in the theater. I am old enough to remember Mt. St. Helen's going off, President Reagan getting shot, and a few years later the space shuttle disaster, the first one. I remember the threat of a "Red Dawn" being more than an old movie. I remember a time before AIDS, but also a time before freedom in Eastern Europe. I remember the Wall, and what it stood for, and I remember it coming down. And I remember the '89 quake shaking me to the floor in California. I barely remember standing on the deck of the USS America with my sailor father and thinking that such a big ship could never sink. The America now sits on the sea be off the US coast forming an artificial reef for marine wild life. I remember watching President Bush's (41) speech on the war with Iraq while I was baby setting my 7 year old cousin, and I remember the same cousin at age 19 going of to fight in Iraq, because the job was not finished the first time.
For all my memories, good and bad, I am blessed. But, I am blessed more for what I do not remember. I can not ever remember a time when I was hungry for days. I do not remember a time when I felt unloved, or undefended. And I can not remember a time when my way of life here in the US was threatened with military invasion. I thank God for my life and the many blessings, and secretly wish everyone in the world could be as spoiled as I have been, for I am now old enough to realize how good I have it.

[ladytera]

I am old enough to know better, and more importantly old enough to keep trying anyway. I am old enough to know the heart squeezing joy and terror of pushing another life into this world, old enough the know the bittersweet pride in watching those lives grow. I am old enough to know that I am too young to realize what I'm missing, and young enough to hope that I will still find most of it before my time is past. I am young enough to remember when I would live forever, but everything was still urgent and needing to be done now. I am old enough to take the long view, relax and know that tomorrow will come, whether I wake with it or not, and that 'til now I've done the best I could. I'm old enough to know I've learned a lot since I was young, and young enough to know that there is still so much I don't know yet. I am old enough to know that love is an eternal friendship, not an eternal drama. I am old enough to know that someday I will die. I am young enough to still feel I have a lot left to do.

I am old enough to see my parents as the wonderful people that they are, instead of just my mom and dad. I am old enough to know that they deserve my profound gratitude for all they gave me as a child, and my most sincere apologies for all I put them through. I am old enough to know too that they already know the first, and don't need the last.

I am old enough to know that tomorrow I will be someone else, and today I am not who I was yesterday, and I'm okay with that. I'm old enough to know that I am eternally loved, intimately known, and unconditionally accepted by God, and young enough to be comforted by that knowledge.

In my mind, I stopped counting after 21, and probably won't start again until I'm 65. Because I'm old enough to know that how old you are isn't what matters, it's what you do with the time you have that counts.