Lessons Learned from a Spanish Verb about Aging

The year I turned nine was the year I learned to hate my birthday.

Well, actually, it wasn’t my birthday per se that I learned to hate, it was getting older that I had a problem with. Yes, at the tender age of nine, I already resented the aging process. But the reason I learned to hate my February birthday had nothing to do with my mortality or a precocious distaste for wrinkles. My hatred was much more practical. I hated getting older because I joined a swim team when I was eight-and-a-half years old.

Swimming Basically Made Me Hate My Birthday

Here’s what you have to understand, swimming as a competitive youth sport is structured around age groups and times. When a kid swims in a meet, presumably he is competing against the other kids in the race, but really, he’s racing against the clock and himself. Because while winning a race is nice, at the end of the day, the goal is to qualify for the Junior Olympics. And just like the regular Olympics, to qualify means hitting a specific time during a race. And qualifying times were based on, you guessed it, age.

So, I never made it to the Junior Olympics and some might say it was simply because I wasn’t a fast enough swimmer and technically that is true. But I blamed my lack of qualifying on my stupid early birthday. I always found myself so close to qualifying for my age group, needing just one or two more meets to do it, but my birthday would hit and the qualifying time would go up a notch (or rather down to a faster time) and I’d have to start all over again. For my friends in my grade who had birthdays in late spring, or early summer after the Junior Olympics competition, they’d qualify and I’d just have to swallow my pride while they swam off to glory and I’d be left cursing my dang February birthday.

I stopped swimming competitively in high school but by then the damage was done. I resented my birthday. I resented turning older before many of my friends. And just to add icing to my cake of resentment, I hated having a birthday in February growing up in Wisconsin because February meant bitter cold, mountains of snow, and somebody invariably coming down with the flu.

Racing Against Time

As time went on, I stopped hating my birthday, but I never learned to embrace it or love it. In fact, what I learned to do, was use it as the goal post I had to hit before…well, before another birthday came around or time ran out. (I don’t know what time running out even meant, it just always felt so urgent) And maybe because the first birthday I resented was my ninth, it has always been my birthdays ending in nine that have  served as significant benchmarks for me.

When I was 29, I hit my goal of getting my first book published and having my first kid. I was determined to do both things before age 30. And I did.

At 39, I squeezed out my last kid and my only daughter. I swore I would have a daughter and I swore I would never have a kid after I was 40, so that was a miracle of both timing and fertility.

And at 49, I moved to Spain. The fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Snuck it in before I turned 50, when it would sound too much like a cliché instead of a bold and daring adventure.

Faking Fly and Fifty

So, there I was, living in Spain at 49 3/4, realizing that despite my outward declarations of being okay with aging, there was still a part of me that felt uncomfortable with turning 50 and getting older. I tried to say the right things in public about getting closer to the big 5-0, but deep inside I knew I wasn’t going to be the poster child for any “fly and fifty” campaigns.

Moving to Spain however, forced me to slow down and really examine my thoughts around aging and my life in general. Here, I find myself with more time for reflection and inner work. I’m noticing things about my thought patterns and I’m paying attention to my emotions. I’m also giving myself permission to do more of the things I enjoy and ignore the things that create negative energy.

Lessons Learned from a Spanish Verb about Aging

One of things I’m doing more of is reading in Spanish, as I try to improve my language skills. And something I recently noticed while reading a Spanish novel, was the difference in the verbs used to state one’s age.

In English, we use the verb “to be” for age, i.e. “I am 49 years old.”

In Spanish, the verb used is tener “to have,” as in “Tengo 49 años/I have 49 years.” And while I’ve known this difference in verbiage since I was 10 years old, it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I pulled apart the significance.

If I say, “I am 49 years old,” then it seems to imply that I am my age. My identity is wrapped around that number. And what that number means is too often determined in the eye of the beholder instead of the beheld. Even if I believe that 49 is in fact, fly and fabulous, others may see it simply as old. Sucks for me if I “am” 50 then.

On the other hand, if I say “I have 49 years,” it sounds more like a gift I own, rather than something that defines me or even hints at my identity.

My age is a possession then, not a definition.

I visualized this concept as having a big basket that holds a collection of my years. This basket is something to be proud of, a testament of my accomplishments, a repository of all that I have experienced. The basket is also only halfway full, yet it is still heavy with lessons learned and wisdom gained. ( And not to be snide, but look at the 20-something with her little basket, with barely any years to show for her life. Nothing to be jealous of there.)

Grateful for the Years in My Basket

So, for the last few weeks, I’ve been walking around with my basket of years and reflecting on my past resentments with my age and the future I want to have. Honestly, as I sit here in my new home, in a new country, looking out on to the horizon of possibilities for what comes next, resentment about my age seems silly. Instead, I am overwhelmingly grateful for this life I have now and for the things I have done in the past that have brought me to this point.

And also, when I think about “having” these years in my basket, with the expectation that next year I’ll have one more, I can’t help but think of my friends and family members who never got to collect more than 37, or 40, or 45 years before their baskets were cruelly snatched away. I ask myself now, how can I resent my abundance of years when others would kill “to have” just one more.

So, now, as I think about my upcoming birthday, I have a new outlook. A new perspective. But I still have work to do to dismiss all of the lingering negative emotions around aging. It’s not like I can erase 49 years of disliking my birthday with a single basket. It’s almost instinctual for me to feel that twinge of resentment that comes with saying goodbye to a decade. Especially as I am the product of a culture that glorifies youth and demonizes aging, particularly aging women.  But as I sit in this beautiful location in the south of Spain, it isn’t hard to find counterarguments to my negative self talk. And the truth of the matter is, I don’t feel old. (Okay, true confession, my knees feel a little old, and sometimes when I sit on the hard floor and then try to get up, I feel old AF.) In my mind though, I feel perpetually 37. And I see my friends the same way, youthful, vibrant and ready for adventures. We just have gray hair and grown-up kids now.

Planning a Personal 50th Birthday Party

The pandemic makes it difficult to plan something grand to celebrate my 50^th birthday. But I don’t need to travel to an exotic locale because I already live in paradise. I don’t have any friends in my new hometown so a big party isn’t even in the cards. But that’s okay, because I think my 50^th birthday celebration is really about me celebrating me, so my “party” will be personal.  (I actually know what I’m going to do to celebrate turning 50, but it’s a surprise that will be revealed after the fact.)

At the end of the day, when I turn 50 in a few weeks, I am going to thank God, the Universe and modern medical science that I get to add another year to my basket, and I will do my very best to enjoy every single day forever after.