Quiet and Humble? Not so much....

"The older you get, the quieter you become. Life humbles you so deeply as you age. You realize how much nonsense you've wasted time on."

---Author Unknown

It's a pretty safe bet that at no time during my life if I live to be 150, will the words "humble" or "quiet" be accurate descriptors of me. It's a good thing we get quieter as we age because I remember being five years old and in trouble (again) at school for yapping too much and being bossy. No one was surprised, since a church preschool that claimed to welcome "All of God's Children" sent me packing after three days. The official reason was, "She's just not ready for this environment." The real reason? Gross insubordination.  When it was lunch time, I wanted to color. Recess found me wanting to stay on my mat and nap, because of course, I had spent naptime, arguing over crayons. At snack time, the rebellion was complete when I told Miss Mabel, "I don't like graham crackers, what else you got?" Nobody was amused, least of all my mum, who would have sent me to a workhouse if it meant she got a couple of hours without me.

So yes, it's a good that as we age, we mellow out a little. The nonsense, however, takes a bit longer to go away, honestly. It's more accurate to say that we likely put up with different nonsense as we age than we might have in our younger days. In my first job out of college, in federal law enforcement, the required wardrobe was business suits with big shoulders and crisp blouses. Every Sunday afternoon I set about ironing those starched dress shirts, making sure there was a run-free selection of pantyhose for the week and lint-brushing my tailored suits. I was a suit junkie. I would haunt Filene's clearance racks, Talbot's Annual sale and of course, the Holy Grail,  Lord, and Taylor to score my power suits. The Dior couture wool suit I scored at a Filene's Basement super clearance goes down as my favorite shopping trophy.

Fast forward a few years, and instead of wrangling racketeering investigations and federal labor laws and I'm a stay-at-home mom, and it's considered a dress-up day if  I wear khakis and a T-shirt with no holes or stains. At that point, the nonsense of power suits and endless ironing was gone. Replaced with the nonsense of toddler fashion, preschool pressure, parenting angst, and sandbox social climbing. Friends of mine that were still in the workforce considered my world one of nonsense, what with all the drool and dirty diapers, but honestly, after having kids? Ironing was a long ago habit, never to return.

The days of having little kids have passed in my house, but last year's nonsense could be this year's super important matter. Now it's teen issues, attitude, an entirely different career, and some other issues best not gone into that, all together, have me as far from quiet or humble as I've been since hitting the bricks at the Village Church Preschool in Nahant. I'm getting older, which is excellent, considering the alternative, but come on. Where is my mellow? On television you see these incredibly hip-looking retired people buying a vineyard or painting in an artist's colony, and while retirement isn't happening anytime soon for me, it seems like the quiet and humble part of my life has also been delayed.

While it's nice to have moved on from some people, places, and attitudes that are well left in the Wayback Machine, it hasn't always been moving forward for me. There were definitely times where everything was just going in one big circle, and then there were setbacks too when passing "Go" was just not happening. I think it's rather more about lots of stumbling around, with the hopeful goal of being relatively happy and healthy along the way. We age in a straight line, younger to older, but that isn't how the rest of the world always works. There will be times for silence and humility, but I bet that the minute we think we have it figured out, something else will crop up.