What Does That Number Mean, Anyway?

 

Photo illustration by Sarina Finkelstein for Money magazine.

“Age is just a number.” Because of that number, I am classified as part of an age cohort and Generation (yes, with a capital G). But, my life philosophy—and the premise of this blog—is based on my belief that as long as I don’t know when I am going to die, I am in the middle of my life.

So, to invoke something a nun taught me (and a roomful of other kids) many years ago, a number—whether it’s age, income, the temperature or anything else—may not have a denotation, but we certainly give it a connotation or, in some cases many connotations 

For example,  a temperature of 10C (50F) doesn’t, by itself, mean much. But in my part of the world, it’s an unusually warm day in January or too cold for July.  And so it is with age:  35 is the youngest at which someone can become the US president, but gymnasts’ careers are long past. Heck, Eddy Merckx retired from bicycle racing two years before that milestone.

As for my age: Three days after my most recent birthday—which was also the 17th anniversary of my gender affirmation surgery—I was older than my maternal grandmother when she passed away. And today a former student, whom I taught during the last year I lived and worked as a man, celebrated a birthday. She is now as many years old as I was when she was in my class—in the Fall of 2002

When Jennifer (So many women around her age share that name!) was my student, almost anybody would have described her as “young” because of her age, which was typical of college students. I was at an age most people would have described as “middle.” I was, in the sense that I had experiences and knowledge even, if I do say so myself, I was “well-preserved” physically. But, in a sense, I was either very old or very young, in the sense that I knew full well that I was near the end of the life I’d been living and on the threshold of becoming who I am.

She is, in some ways (that I am aware of, anyway), if not older, then at least more evolved than I was at her age: She is aware of what she loves and needs in ways I was just learning. And she resisted pressures to follow a particular educational and career path in favor of one that aligns more closely with her skills and desires.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was a very old woman long before she reached my age. Her body began to break down, from a combination of genetics, poverty and lack of self- and other kinds of care, long before she reached Jennifer’s current age or mine when I met Jennifer. She nearly went blind a few years before she passed; she turned to the then-still-experimental technique of laser surgery (which her insurance wouldn’t pay for) in desperation. Thankfully, the procedure restored enough of her sight that she could do most of what she could do before, albeit with thick glasses.

So, what does the number of years we’ve been on this planet say about us? At my current age, I have been old enough to live in a senior citizens’ building for more than two years. To many of my neighbors, however, I am a “kid.” My grandmother woke, almost surely see me the same way. When I was Jennifer’s age, I had been an adult, at least in the eyes of the law, for decades while she, as a student, had been one only a few years. But I was in a similar situation in one way:  almost ready to embark upon a life based upon what I want and need rather than others’ expectations.

In other words, she and I were and are in the middle of our lives. So was my grandmother: Even as the rest of her body deteriorated, her sight was restored. She probably had no idea of how much more she would see, just as neither Jennifer nor I know how many days and experiences await us.