Everyone is getting older

My husband is a pretty straight laced guy - but when we met, he rode a motorcycle, wore a leather jacket and smoked cloves on the weekend.

Then we grew up a little and he traded in riding the bike for driving a car the was safe and could fit car seats. Hung up the leather jacket for a Carhartt. And ended up with a wicked case of upper respiratory infection and quit smoking a few months before I found out I was pregnant with our first daughter. 

He talked about getting the bike out now that the weather is getting consistently nice and I have to wonder how much longer we have to feel young.

I'm not afraid of getting older - my age isn't what scares me, isn't what makes my heart stop beating for a handful of seconds at a time - it's the fact that as I get older ... so does everyone else.
 When I was 16, I was scheduled for a pretty intense eye surgery to replace the intraocular lens in my right eye. The one I was born with had been surgically removed when I was 3 1/2 years old because of an accident, which resulted in me being permanently blind in that eye (save for some peripheral vision) for forever. Unless a miracle happens. Instead of doing the normal pre-op stuff with me, my ophthalmologist had a massive heart attack. A man who had treated me like a daughter and been at my beck and call for more than 13 years could have been stolen from my life.

The last thing on my mind was my surgery being canceled. But, I didn't pray when I was 16. I didn't give God much credit for anything. I was at a point in my life where I'd wandered away from faith and was trying to find my way back.

When I was 16 I realized I was getting older, yes, but so was everyone else. And it's something I have a lot of trouble coming to terms with.

When I was 17, just about a year later, they wheeled me into the OR and hooked me up, and the sweet angle who had so long ago saved a little part of me looked down and asked if I was ready to do this. And I had the lens replaced in my eye. But I will never forget how it felt to learn I might have lost him, to know he was not invincible. That death could come knocking at any moment.

That as I age, so does everyone else.

That surgery was performed 14 years ago last December. I've since had a muscle surgery on the same eye. It was the last surgery he performed on me before he retired. I've sworn that, unless God grants us the ability to fix the damage I did with that knife, it was the last surgery my right eye will ever be subjected to. There is no more trying to fix it. The damage is done.

But that doesn't negate the fact we all continue to age. And with age comes ... more. More fear I'll wake up tomorrow to a phone call, a tragedy, a missed opportunity to say "I love you" one more time.

This post comes on the heels of witnessing my dad's health do some strange things recently, things that his doctors can't figure out. Things I pray we'll find an answer to. Things that make my heart stop beating and time slow to a crawl as I try to process the fact ... he's gotten older, and with getting older so often good health declines. I hate it. It scares me to watch it. It's pushing my ability to sit idly by almost three hours away to the limit, to the point that packing up the girls and moving home for a week at a time sounds like it could be a viable option, despite having things to do here.

Because, he's my dad. And most every little girl's first love is her daddy. And I can't stand the thought of my heart breaking.

Being the younger of two daughters, I voluntarily gave myself the title of honorary tom boy, a girl who could do things a son would do, too. My sister did as well, but it was usually me you could find in the garage doing something with Dad, or crawling around in the cool dirt beneath the deck exploring, or climbing the stone piles at the town highway garage across the street, or going out at night with a flashlight and collecting nightcrawlers to use as bait (though I only did that once that I can really recall because it was a night the worms were everywhere and I was just a little eeked out about the slimy feeling on my toes).

To say my dad has been one of the most important men in my life is really putting it mildly. I consider my mom to be one of my best friends, but my dad was the first one I usually went to with a problem when I was growing up. I look up to him and cherish any time we get together, and know there is so much more I could learn from him.

But as I get older, he has, too. And I can't fix this. My faith is stronger now than it was when I was 16 and I'll pray until I'm blue in the face the next doctor he sees will have more of an idea what's going on or a concrete answer and a solution because I think I'm just a little too young right now to be begging for more time of any sort. I hate to beg, but for this I'll demand the time.

Because he's getting older and I want to rewind time, go back to a place where playing catch was something we did everyday after school and I'd sneak to the garage where he would calm me down after fights with my sister.

I just want more ... time.

{I started this post about a week ago. It was going to be amazing and stellar and blow you away. Then I sat in front of my computer one afternoon trying to write it and cried like a baby and walked away. Now I'm back and more than once my husband has looked at me from across the table and asked if I'm OK. No, not really, but it's going to have to do for tonight. My apologies for the high level of cryptic messages in this one, but even with them, I'm sure someone will relate because really it's not about ages and getting older, but about the time together between the beginning and the end.}