Sunday Newscape Magazine

From “My Lost Youth” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My husband regularly declares that it’s over. “It” is usually something precious and irretrievable once lost, such as youth or life or sanity.

He made this declaration the first time an attractive young woman called him “Sir.”

“It’s over!” he lamented, throwing up his arms melodramatically.

He said it again the first time he had to go out and buy a nose hair trimmer. Trimming one’s nose hair is one of those bellwether events in life, a sign that youth – which, to paraphrase an old saying, has a bad habit of wasting itself on the young – has abandoned you and your hairy nostrils and is heading for the hills.

“It’s really, really over,” my man moaned when he stood in front of the mirror with his trimmer.

Being a full six months younger, I used to laugh at my geriatric spouse. I liked to point out that not a single hair was sticking out of my nose. But I stopped laughing recently, just after I celebrated yet another birthday on the south side of 40.

That’s because I found myself in a long and serious conversation with my dad about the attributes of various high-fiber breakfast cereals. A deep and abiding interest in fiber is a sure sign of impending geezerdom, and I didn’t even notice it until I saw the looks on the faces of my children. Every teenager should have to sit through a discussion of the digestive delights of eating a cardboard breakfast. It will give him or her a greater appreciation for the fleeting Cap’n Crunch phase of life.

I might have forgotten about our fiber forum if I hadn’t gotten freaked out a couple of days later when it appeared I needed to add adult diapers to my shopping list.

See, I was driving a friend’s car, which is equipped with those new-fangled seat heaters. (OK, I know they’ve been around for a while, but I’ve never had them.) When I placed my purse on the car’s console, it apparently pressed the seat heater button. Not realizing this, I was alarmed when a warm feeling spread across my backside. Naturally, I assumed that Father Time had put my bladder on the fast track to incontinence.

As I was driving to the drugstore to get some Depends, I began to have some of those long, long thoughts of youth mentioned by Longfellow (who, by the way, seems to have had the perfect name for such nostalgia). I was almost weak with relief when I got out of the car and discovered that my pants were dry.

Apparently, I’m not quite as long-in-the-tooth as I thought. At least not yet. I did head on into the store, though, to look over the selection of nose hair trimmers. I also picked up an anticipatory package of Depends. I want to be prepared for the inevitable.

Even so, the next time my husband announces that it’s over, I’m going to quote another great poet.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

© Jackie Papandrew 2008, All Rights Reserved

Visit Jackie’s website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.