MIDLIFE AND CLASS REUNIONS

 

SUDDENLY, I realized I must be getting old!

 

After an afternoon of dizzying shopping for Christmas presents and browsing along the fashion outlets for holiday wear, I decided to steady my wobbling feet and get a snack at a small coffee shop before heading for home.  Hardly had I taken a seat by the window when a waiter approached and asked me for my order.  Before I could even open my mouth, he followed up his question with , “Ma’am, do you have a senior citizen’s card so you can get a discount?” I was almost floored.  Did I really look as if I were at least a year above sixty?

 

It then occurred to me that I must be really looking my age already, far from the fresh and naïve look (or some traces of it) I thought I still have.  There is no escaping that midlife has set in.

 

Looking back, I realized I have been in the second spring of my life for some time without really giving it some serious thought.  The signs have been there evidently.

 

Back home, I began to sort out my thoughts.

 

Midlife is a time to pause; to take stock of what we have accomplished, where we are now and what else we want to do.  It is a time for redefining new joys, new goals and new directions.  Gone are the days when we worked ourselves to the bone just to be ahead in the rat race that is the corporate world.  We are now content with simple joys and blessings that come with a sense of inner peace and feeling of having done enough to last us a lifetime.

 

We have learned to listen to our bodies, to stop when we feel that our blood pressure is going up or our heart’s throbbing is out of the ordinary.  We have learned to be selective with our diet and to forego excessive drinking and fatty foods.  We have since been conscious of our cholesterol levels that regular visits to the doctor for blood counts and examinations have become a habit.

 

Most of our children have reached adolescence and have started to build separate lives - careers in far away lands or nests with ttheir own families.  We are left with an empty house with just the hubby and precious memories to keep us company, memories of now lonesome rooms which used to ring with warmth and laughter.  We can hardly contain our sadness when we visit our children’s former quarters and find that only small tokens of their previous occupants remain - a book or two, a graduation picture and a daughter’s teddy bear, all mute reminders of happy days that can never come back.

 

We have more time to devote to the Lord.  We are now permanent fixtures in church affairs when before we used our jobs as excuses to be just ordinary Sunday mass-goers.  And we have become more caring individuals.  Having realized how the Lord has been kind to us, we have learned to share and practice the virtue of giving till it hurts.

 

AND YES, we know we are getting old when we get a notice to attend a 35^th anniversary high school reunion.  When you get to be fifty something, there is just no way you can avoid the business of memories anymore.  Classmates and batchmates expect you to show up and contribute your share of vivid reminiscence of things past, when boys were still in their shorts and girls in their bobby socks.  You are compelled to come at the risk of being the topic of conversation or so you are warned.  So you attend to protect your back and assure yourself that the joke will be at somebody else’s expense.

 

Together, you think about the good old days when you filled up slum books indicating your favorite songs, quotation, color, pals, local and Hollywood actors, etc.  and defining what “crush” or “love” is.  You talk about those days when the class was divided between those who were pro-Susan Roces and pro-Amalia Fuentes, shades of things to come in the current political arena.  When I found my old authograph album and browsed through it, I could not believe that I could be that “silly.”  Did I really write those lines?  Wait till my classmates see what they wrote in theirs.

 

You recall secret “crushes.”  Was it in high school when you experienced the pangs of first love?  Will the object of your teenage fancy show up and if he or she does , will he or she still have that inexplicable  magic that made your young heart a-flutter in his or her presence?  Will he still remember the songs that wafted on the air during those high school years which he attributed to you, classics like How Wonderful to Know, No Other Love, That’s All, etc.?

 

You talk about the present.  Of how many have gone to the Great Beyond and think about them.  You compare notes on who has the most number of grandchildren and who have substantial greenbucks in the bank.  The ladies will look discreetly at one another and gasp at how the class beauties have added on tremendous pounds and how somebody was able to maintain that whistle-bait figure that landed her a slot in the Miss Philippines pageant during our time.  And the gentlemen?  They will likely argue on who has the most prominent receding hairline and largest waistline.

 

Oh to be young and beautiful and carefree again.  For one fleeting day, you go back to the days when you were younger and your concerns were not things like the state of the nation or if you can get the country back on track soon but what college course to take or how to maintain your grades.

 

FOR INDEED, when we hit the half-century mark, we realize that we have just about reached the pinnacle of our dreams.  It is time to count our blessings and not brood about what might have been.  So, why walk along grudgingly when we can make midlife truly the second spring of our lives.  It is up to us to keep autumn at bay for a long, long while.

 

Enriqueta Figueroa-Manabat