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"&amp;quot;Age is a number. And mine&amp;#039;s unlisted,&amp;quot; is my best friend Harriet&amp;#039;s response to any question about her age. I&amp;#039;ve known Harriet for 29 years. We met as sophomores in college and have been friends ever since. She&amp;#039;s my age. And while I know it&amp;#039;s impolite to ask anyone over 21 how old she is, I&amp;#039;ve never taken offense, and freely given the information if asked, in part because I&amp;#039;ve never felt my chronological age. Until now.  There&amp;#039;s no escaping certain facts about perimenopause. Though inside I may feel almost a decade younger \u2014 which was happily confirmed by a website where you enter your health habits to determine your real age \u2013- my body with its hot flashes, mood swings, and recent weight gain, contradicts that feeling. Another contradiction is having a second-grader and being in the company with a lot of moms who are indeed in their 30s. A recent exchange with one of them went like this. Mom of three: &amp;quot;What are you writing about these days?&amp;quot; Me: &amp;quot;Hot flashes.&amp;quot; Her (thoughtlessly, perhaps?): &amp;quot;Oh, yeah, my mom gets those.&amp;quot; Thanks. Suddenly I&amp;#039;m grandma.  I also find, not to be morbid, that the future looks a lot less expansive recently. It&amp;#039;s true that women are living longer now in the United States (around 81 for Caucasian women), but it&amp;#039;s also true that there&amp;#039;s more of my life&amp;#039;s real estate behind than in front of me. And that accounts perhaps for the tinge of melancholy I&amp;#039;ve been feeling as I approach a birthday this month. I&amp;#039;ll be 49.  I&amp;#039;ve been polling friends to ask if this new awareness or intimation of mortality is indeed a part of the midlife landscape. Jane says it was for her and struck particularly hard as she approached 50. The feeling might strike even harder, she thought, if you have young children. Other friends are dealing with aging and chronically ill parents; mortality is never far from their minds these days, they tell me.  I&amp;#039;m not one to dwell on the negative, yet I&amp;#039;m not able to shrug off the feeling as I could have perhaps even just a year ago. I think, though I can&amp;#039;t tell you why yet, that that&amp;#039;s a good thing.  What about you, reader? Are you more aware of mortality and time passing at midlife? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/a45098/age-is-a-number-2496/>