There are little signs that I am aging. People call me Mam and not Miss. None of my kids live at home full-time. I prefer flannel to lace, and so does Travis. Even my dogs are old. But last week, I felt the true weight of my age. 

I coach diving. This is my seventh year coaching at the high school level. It’s exhausting. When I look around, not so many coaches of any sports are my age, probably because our short days are ten hours long. I get to work at 7:30am, and leave at 5:30pm. Last week was a two meet week, which means that I got to work at 7:30am, and left work around 9pm on Tuesday and Thursday. I feel those days. When I look around me, the only sports that have coaches around my age are football and baseball. Those pay better, so maybe it’s worth the time. Some of those coaches are actually retired from other vocations, so they don’t have to put in the long days. Diving is secondary to a secondary sport (swimming… and diving). There isn’t much money in the budget for those positions. We coach for the love of the sport. 

Last Tuesday, at an away meet, I was coaching from the side of the pool before the meet. It was loud, as it usually is with the teams warming up. As I went to walk up to my diver behind the boards to give instructions for improvement on a certain dive, I stepped on a metal box that held some cords for the timing touch-pads. The metal box slid across the slick pool deck, taking my foot and right leg with it. For a fraction of a second, I thought I was going to slide right into the pool. With a last minute correction, I was able to shift to my left and land on the pool deck. As I was going down, seemingly in slow motion, the people around me were voicing concern and moving in my direction while reaching out to help me. Not one person laughed. Not even the swimmers. They were all concerned for me. I got up quickly and acted like all was okay, but I realized, with clarity, that I was the oldest person on the pool deck. The referee may have been around my age, but that was the only person. That’s why they were concerned. They thought I was going to break a hip. In fact, my right hip hurt like the devil from the correction to avoid the humiliating fall into the pool. It hurt so bad, I felt nauseous… not that I let anyone know. Coincidentally, I already had an appointment with a hip specialist for the following day. 

That was the moment that I realized that I am on the backside of the hill of life. I was also on my own amble backside on the pool deck. And who has an appointment with a hip specialist anyway? Duh! I will say that I felt really young in the waiting room of the hip doctor. After an X-ray, it was determined that I don’t have any glaring hip issues. So, I also have chronic pain for no reason. So now, I am just pretending that my hips don’t hurt, since they shouldn’t hurt. I can go for an MRI, and I eventually will, but not this year. 

I have no pictures that show how old I feel during these long working, winter days, so I put a picture of the Christmas tree crew from the day after Thanksgiving: my kiddos, my nephew Conall, and Wolfe, Taryn’s boyfriend. My students asked me how old I was the other day. When I told them I was 52, they said they thought I was 35 or 40 max. Of course, they have ulterior motives for lying, but I’m taking that as a compliment. 

Have a great week everyone. You’re as young as you’ll ever be, so live it up. And try not to break a hip while living it up.