Talking to my step dad for the first time in a long, long time, he's pushing 90 now and I'm 10 years younger than he was when I first met him. As he's gotten on in years he's started to sound more like his own mother, speaking with the same cadence and lapsing into old turns of phrases that I'm guessing he no longer has the mental fortitude to stop himself from turning to. Instead of using, "etcetera, etcetera", or "so on, and so forth", she would say, "and thing". Maybe it was supposed to be, "and such and such a thing" and over time it became shortened? Anyway it was a very odd and memorable term that would certainly mark anyone using it as "country", especially growing up in New York City as my step father did. So hearing it from him was strange indeed; almost like as he aged he was transported back to a different time.
It's very clear to me now exactly how I fit the definition of "middle aged", looking down at my own children who are about the same age now as I was all those years ago when I first met the man. I'm squarely in the middle. My parents who have been fortunate enough to survive into their 70s and 80s, more or less, intact, are nearing the ends of their lives, and my children are just starting.
It's an interesting perspective, I can almost imagine myself in three phases of life all at once, a time when I looked up to an infallible adult, myself now, full of doubt about whether I'm making the right choices for my kids, and finally I wonder if I'll still be able to call my kids when they have families of their own. Will they still want to talk to me? I hope we can have more than a handful of stilted conversations in their adult lives, I hope they really let me know them. I wonder if he regrets how things turned out between us? I'm not sure I really do, but I know that if I were in his shoes, I would.