35

Tomorrow I will be 35 years old.

That number sounds old in my head and even older when I say it out loud. In the last few months when I have lamented about my upcoming almost mid-life crisis my friends and family have said the usual cliches: Age is just a number. You're only as old as you feel. You look younger than you are. It's not middle aged. 35 is young.

But I'm not young. And I'm not old. I'm stuck somewhere in the middle. Too old to be totally irresponsible and overly spontaneous. Too young to be devoid of risk-taking and completely settled.

It is difficult to define this stage of my life. I buy anti-aging moisturizer and shop at Forever 21. I like pop music made by teenagers, but I identify more with their parents. I still have a problem with authority, but find myself frustrated at how disrespectful people younger than me can be at times. I am a contradiction, a paradox, a living irony.

I am bewildered by how quickly life goes. I blinked and ten years passed. People call me ma'am. I don't get carded every time I buy wine at the grocery store. I care about things like health care and high efficiency dishwashers and my federal withholdings on my taxes. I knew all this would be part of my life eventually, all these "adult" things, but when they start to become the majority of your life is when you realize you're a bona fide grown up.

I'm a grown up. An adult. I'm going to be 35 tomorrow which solidifies those words as part of my identity even more. I don't want to become one of those people who lives in denial of their age and starts acting like their 15 years younger than they are; but I also don't want to settle in for the long haul and forget all the things I dream about doing before it's too late. There are so many good times to be had, so many things to do, so many places to see.

My paternal grandmother, who was a strong, stern, Southern woman, died when she was 74. We had just celebrated her birthday a few months before with two giant sparklers on her cake. I joked with her that 74 candles would have burned the house down, and she laughed and smacked me on the arm. That summer she had an angioplasty and before her surgery, each family member visited her just in case something were to happen (and also because she insisted). As I leaned over to hug her, she patted my back and said, "I have some things to say to you." When I started to protest her "goodbye" speech she told me to be quiet and listen to her. So I did. She told me to be a good girl to my parents and then begged me to not marry too young like she did and to be patient for children because I'd never get the time back once they were born. Then she said, "Don't do what I did. I waited for something exciting to happen to me and it never did. You have to do it yourself." I nodded my head and said I'd see her soon, but sadly she passed during the surgery.

I thought about her words this week. She was 74 and had lived a full life, but still longed for something meaningful and dramatic and wonderful to happen to her. I don't want to live another 35 years and still be waiting for those things. If I want to live the life I have dreamed of, it's up to me to help make it happen and it's not too late to start.

I thought 35 was old for so long, but it's not. It's not young either. Honestly it doesn't matter what it is. 35 is me and I still want adventure and I still want my responsibility. Maybe that's the blessing in all of this, in being stuck in the middle of young and old - you get the best of both.