There are mornings when I feel like I'm a hundred years old. I have those nights when my mind won't quit, my body won't relax and just when I find myself drifting off to sleep my husband's cell phone will ring and he'll have to run out into the oilfield to take care of some problem or another.
I wake up aching, my thoughts disorganized and I don't want to leave my bed. At least I think that's what it feels like to be a century old, I really don't know as I'm not even halfway there.
There seem to be more and more centenarians all the time and the ones interviewed on television always look great, for their age. Last weekend Canada's oldest woman died. She was 111 and 11 months and passed away in 2011. As I ponder the numbers it occurs to me this woman had lived through all my favourite history. Communication wasn't what it is now so she wouldn't have know everything was happening at the time but she was part of the eras.
In my short life technology has moved at a breakneck pace. I was born into a time of change and it hasn't slowed even though some of the things I grew up to expect haven't happened yet. I've ridden a wave of technology since I was a child and there are times I wish change would slow down a bit and let me enjoy what I think of as simplicity.
I wonder if time slows down at a certain age as I watch it rush past me now. I've already begun to receive reminders of income tax time and it seems like I've just filed the 2009 return.
Most of my life was set in the late 1900s and I'm finally used to starting my cheque dates with 20. There are times when I do feel old, especially when my children give me the look I gave my own parents when I thought they were old-fashioned.
Today the oldest person in Canada is also 111, she lives in Ituna, and will turn 112 next month. She has seen more than I can imagine.
When I was young I would never have imagined having cameras without film, a car that could estimate how many more kilometres there were left on a tank and a tiny little mobile phone people could type me messages on.
Some changes make our life easier, some may not be necessary and some seem ridiculous, even to me. I don't know how many years I'll have, but if I make it to 111 I'm sure I'll have some amazing tales to tell.
