"Today my son made me realise something about myself. And it was an eye-opener."

Sometimes, things just creep up on you, and this is one of them.

This morning I woke up to the sweet caress of my two-year-old son stroking my face. As his little chubby fingers swirled over my forehead and down my nose, I took a moment to marvel at the pure sweetness of his touch, before opening my eyes, to find his mischievous little green ones centimetres from my face.

“Mumma,” he whispered “Why do you have so many of these sprinkles all over your face?”

Ha. My little cherub hadn’t been caressing my face out of sheer adoration per-se, but more just allowing his fingers to trace over the road map of ‘sprinkles’ that have appeared with Ebola like tenacity on my previously smooth face.

Each line seems to rapidly develop, fast resembling an overused highway as opposed to the barely visible, off the beaten track paths they started out as, only a few short years ago.

The thing is, it isn’t just my son who has noticed the fast multiplying number of ‘sprinkles’ on my face, I also noticed in a rare moment alone in front of the mirror recently and for the first time in my life I thought, perhaps I’m no spring chicken anymore?

I decided to give myself the benefit of the doubt, but just in case, I started to mentally compile a list of all my ‘mature moments’.

Unfortunately it didn’t take very long for the list to start padding out.

Not long after the wrinkles I encountered a couple of grey hairs. Then, few weeks after that, I parted my hair differently and a couple of grey hairs turned out to be A LOT of grey hairs.

That same week I had my annual check-up with the Optometrist who told me “it would be irresponsible, bordering on reckless if you don’t go straight from here to fill this glasses prescription, you’re practically blind Mrs McBryde!” Sheesh, who knew twenty-two-year-old Optometrists could be so pushy?

Then I had to endure something that added years to my youthful status. A difficult breakup. After years of infidelity (mine), I had continued to live under the same roof as my love of nearly fifteen years, hoping that somehow we might find our way back to each other. But the truth was undeniable, we were living separate lives. My pre-baby shoe collection and I were officially over.

“It isn’t you, ridiculously expensive silver stilettos from London, it's me, I swear, I have been an inattentive and unfaithful owner. I thought it would just be a fling, that I would end it and come back to you, but the fact is I have fallen in love with the boring and practical ballet flat. I know, I know, ballet flats have none of your pizzaz and sparkle and they could never give me calf definition like you did BUT they have loved me through swollen pregnant feet and long games in the park and well……don’t get me wrong we’ve had great times but I think we’ve just grown apart……”

The break up was hard on both of us.

In the end it was actually nothing physical that made me bon-voyage my youth title. It was the words searing into my ears and tumbling out of my mouth.

Just this week my husband said “Hun, can you pick me up some handkerchiefs when you’re out today. It’s only the first day of spring and my allergies are already playing up”. Handkerchiefs? I thought the first world evolved to tissues in the 1900’s?

And then yesterday my best friend and I had a twenty minute conversation about how the agitators in her washing machine isn’t working. “It's so annoying it isn’t distributing the powder equally so when I hang it out there are powdery clumps all over the clean clothes!”

This topic alone would probably have been enough to close the case on my middle age membership, but then to really hammer the point home I retorted, “I know and what about all this rain? It's ridiculous, it takes two days to dry anything, it's like mother nature is conspiring against us!”

The case was mounting.

Finally, I had to concede that the ship of my youth had not only set sail but had actually anchored itself to the port of my past when I heard myself say the following three comments all in the one afternoon.

“Don’t be wasteful, there are starving children in Africa who would love to eat this food.”

“If the wind changes your face will freeze like that.”

“Well John, the proof is in the pudding.”

Yep. I think its safe to say that the ‘sprinkles’ might just be the icing on the cake.

What are some of the things you’ve said or done lately that made you feel old?

This post was originally published on The Ramblings of Ruby Tuesday and has been republished here with full permission.

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