Think with me as I muse for a moment and compare life stages to each portion of the lenses in a pair of tri-focal glasses. Stage 1, childhood through youth, consists of things that are up close – self centric - like the view through the reading portion of the lens; stage 2, young adulthood, consists of a wider view of self and now includes others, like the view through the middle portion of the lens; and stage 3 “mature” adulthood consists of the longer view like the top portion of the lens. I think of stage 3 as a rich blend of ingredients folded together - the past into the present and the present into the future, the combination which now makes up my “mature” adult view of life.
Somewhere in young adulthood I may have glimpsed that future time and thought it so far away that I certainly didn’t give it too much thought, even as I heard the mature adults in my life discussing the aches and pains that come with stage 3. And then (much too suddenly) I began to experience those same aches and pains.
Nevertheless, Stage 3 is not a bad stage in which to be! I’ve done with the growing up struggles of childhood and youth (thank the Good Lord) and have waded, swam and even been rescued from the deep, sometimes sweet, sometimes treacherous waters of marriage, childrearing, teen managing, empty nest survival, giving my sons away to their chosen spouses, and have arrived at the breathless, almost heart stopping moment of seeing the sweet tracing of my children and even myself in the faces of their children.