I took this photo of myself recently for the updated photography section. The touch of grey along the sides of my hair came as something as a surprise. I never get a good look at the sides of my head, and my friends never mention this chronological landmark. I suppose I’ve been going grey since I was in my late teens, never noticing how far it’s come along until now.

I tell people I didn’t feel old until I turned 27. It’s that age where you’re closer to 30 than to 25, the difference between a “young adult” and an “adult”. More of a milestone than the step that 28 is.

It seems like every time I talk about being in university, or at my current job, or how long I’ve known John, I keep adding another year. An incremental reminder that I’m getting older.

Although it didn’t quite feel like it this year.

When you get to my age and most of your best years are behind you instead of ahead of you… it is a little easier to both appreciate what you have and to regret what you will never have again.

—Michael on Randomness and Disconnection

In this culture, we’re bred to believe that every step of our lives will affect the next one with dire consequences. If you don’t choose the right classes in grade 10, you’ll be stuck in something you don’t like in grade 11, and end up scoring poorly. If you score poorly in grade 11, you’ll limit your options for grade 12. If you don’t have the right classes in grade 12, you’ll have fewer universities from which to choose. So on and so on, until the C+ you got in history class means you’ll be mowing lawns for the rest of your life.

I wish I never stopped learning piano, so I could have another medium to express myself. I wish I grew up learning Tai Chi, so it’d be more natural to me. I wish I bought a house sooner, so I could have capitalized on amortization in the rising housing market. I wish I had started contributing to my RRSPs at a younger age, so I could retire at the age I want. I wish I paid more attention in French class, so I could still use it as a language. I wish I had gone to therapy earlier, so I wouldn’t have messed up the relationships that mattered.

All these situations where I feel like I’m too old and passed the point where I can achieve something efficiently, or maximize my gains.

But then I see how happy some people are, who are twice my age, and haven’t planned for retirement yet. Or some who still live in an apartment, without a house or car for equity. Some are newly single at fifty, and dating, and happier than they’ve ever been (and here I am, thinking that I’ll be single for the rest of my life because everyone my age is already married). Even Lloyd, who just obtained his doctorate last year at 36, told me that one’s skills can take them anywhere, and that age is never a matter. I’m not sure if I believe that yet, but I’d sure like to.

It all makes me wonder: is it really too late? Are my best years really behind me?

Perhaps they’re not.

All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.

—George Orwell

On Saturday mornings I wake up a little past seven, no matter how late I was up on Friday. Get dressed, check the mail, read the news, go upstairs to cook breakfast in a pan of grease. Everything is timed perfectly. The toast is started two minutes before the eggs are broken into the pan, but only after the bacon is done. The tea starts steeping two minutes before that. Everything is ready and warm within 25 minutes.

Dolly gets a treat on the weekend mornings: a bit of Fancy Feast, or half-and-half mixed with water. Cats are lactose intolerant, so they can’t drink straight milk, but they’re drawn the fat that their noses can smell.

Bacon, bread, egg, bacon, bread, egg. I eat my breakfast in order, going clockwise around the plate, but I always save a few sips of tea for the end. Even though I’ve given up the Hong Kong style milk tea, Orange Pekeoe is an appropriate black leaf substitute, rounding out the meal.

It’s a little ritual that keeps me sane. At the end of breakfast, satisfied and full, I can reflect and recharge, down to the dregs.

Every year, as I grow older, I find that I let my tea steep a little longer. Maybe life has gotten a little too complicated, and I need the tea as a distraction, or perhaps life has become too simple, and I need the companionship of a rich mug to stimulate me.

Strange how a teapot can represent at the same time the comforts of solitude and the pleasures of company.

And I’ve never needed this more than I do now.

Moving is often a task I avoid at all costs. The mess of packing, booking elevators, organizing rides, and physically shifting dirty boxes around becomes a lot more complicated than I care for. Being approached to help move by a close friend is a different story, however, as it becomes one of the few times that I can prove how much I’m willing to do for them.

It thus becomes a rather galvanizing scene to arrive with a party of friends at a doorstep, ready to help bring someone else into another phase in their life. This weekend was no exception, when helping Pat and Jen settle into their new place, a newly built four bedroom house out in the west end. Through most of last week, Pat and Jen had already moved the small items themselves, so the only things that were left were the bulky furniture. There were only eight of us, but we were finished before we knew it.

Pat and Jen paid us in beer, pizza, and wings, but given the fact that they had already done most of the work, we hardly deserved it. The rest of the day was spent playing Mario Power Tennis, Donky Konga, and table tennis.

Helping them moving was a reminder of how we’re all growing up. Getting married, getting old.

I once asked Darren, the only other male cousin with whom I share a Generation name, whether he thought we’d end up like our fathers, two brothers who also share their own. Our fathers who are moody, wasted old men who work too hard, and don’t get enough sleep. Before we realized it though, we had already turned into them, surviving the days on mostly restless sleep.

Look at us now. Pat and Jen are engaged, starting their family here. Aaron and Karen are one block away.

And the couples take home leftovers the way the parents do at all the Christmas parties during the holidays.

I caught my father after a shower. How formal the word, father. Like addressing a character in some Elizabethan play. His hair was mussed, wild, even thinner than before. He’s been going gray since he was 15, and every couple of months he colours it black again. It works for him, taking at least ten years off his age. People don’t really know how old he is until he tells them that I’m in my twenties.

The bacon they serve me for breakfast is dry, dull, devoid of soft fat, or grease that pools in the waves of each strip. A result of his heart condition. No more cheese, red meat only once a week.

Even my mothers’ delicate hands have deeply withered, though they remain soft from her attentive care, which include varying sorts of designer hand creams and specialized lotions that follow her everywhere. My parents have long stopped wearing their weddings bands, but she wears one of my grandmothers rings, a beautiful old-fashioned cut on a clamp mount, left to her in the will. I remember my grandmother pinching my cheeks, holding my hand, her skin loose but, like mom, supple as a softened chamois.

I see this ring on my mother, and realize that she’s getting older too.