What is 10 years?

What is ten years? It's a moment, it's a lifetime, it is yesterday, it is a life ago. It's the difference between 3 and 13; between still feeling young at 38 to suddenly being faced with being almost 50 just ten years later.

We go from being a toddler to being a teen, from being a teen, to being a grown up, such radical life changes in those leaps, but from 23-33, we're still young adults, and time just evaporates. We still have transitions, from barely out of school, to motherhood, from party days, to raising a family, but our face in the mirror, our body, our mind, seems to stay relatively put for a while.

The changes haven't really hit me over the last few decades, one after another, until recently, when I am nearing 49 and I say, when did this happen? When did I go from being an old young person to a young old person, because old is suddenly how I'm starting to feel. Are the changes between 33-43 just as drastic as the years between 3 and 13? But less noticeable? Less blunt in the mirror? Less shocking to see?

Ten years ago I had a 4 year old. At 38 I was so young. Ten years pass and my boy is closer to being a man than a baby. Closer to starting his own life away. Closer to not needing me and I am closer to slowly falling apart. My eyesight, my stiff shoulder, my aching hip, my forgetful mind, my widening bite, forever trying to return to its pre-braces state. When did this happen? When did I grow old and how can I remind myself to appreciate the health and beauty I have, because I'm not yet even 50, and ten years ago at 38, I certainly didn't realize what youth I had then. Am I still stuck in the same bad habit, a decade later, of only seeing my perceived flaws and never realizing the truth of myself?

I find myself thinking a lot lately about how ten years truly is a lifetime of change, even during our 20s, 30s and 40s, when we don't quite see it on the surface like we do form 4 to 14, from 14-24.

What is ten years?

Ten years is a lifetime.

Ten years is a minute. 

Ten years ago seems like yesterday.

Ten years from now seems hard to imagine... me almost 60? My child, 24?

When did this happen?

He was 4 just yesterday.