And a Half

“I’m ninety-five and a half,” my mom’s been saying for the past few months.

And to my mom, the half matters.

As it did to my daughter, when she was three and a half, and four and a half . . . until she was nearly a teenager.

In those years my daughter felt as though a year stretched on forever. So six months was worthy of being marked and counted. She knew who, among her friends, was a half year older or younger. And this ranking mattered.

But before she even conceived the concept of age, I had counted her age in even smaller increments.

“She’s three days old,” I told her brother when we brought her home from the hospital.

“Five weeks,” I said to an inquiring grandma at the grocery store.

“By the time she’s six months old,” my mother-in-law told me, “it’ll feel a little easier.”

And I hoped she was right.

My mom is no longer ninety-five and a half. Last week, her children gathered to celebrate her birthday. For most of us who sat around the table, half years fly by without notice. Some of us even have trouble remembering our ages.

But the time may well come when, like my mother, we’ll also count in half years. Smaller measures of age carry more significance at both ends of life. In those remarkable times, just after birth and just before death, states of affair can change fast.

Right now, my mom is just plain ninety-six. But it probably won’t be long until she claims another half year. And ninety-six and a half sounds impressive.