Oh, Bother

     A new co-worker joined us this week.  She's lovely and rather young, but I've never really paid much mind to how old anyone is who works with me.  For most of my career, I've often been the youngest or one of the youngest managers on the team.  But just as the basketball players I watch all seem to be getting younger, this too shall pass.
     The new woman already knows one of the members of the team.  They were remembering some once shared humor about how she was born the same year that the other one was married.  She was born in 1994.  Then we all started to giggle about items in our homes that are older than this woman.  For example, I am 100% sure that I have towels older than her.  She's three years older than my first child.
     No big whoop, I said to myself.  Who cares.
     Later this afternoon, she needed to chat in my office about some scheduling needs.  She has a vacation coming up to attend to family concerns due to her grandfather's recent death.  She told me that her mother, who is battling uterine cancer, wants to get the whole family together to celebrate her father's life and get away from the sadness and the rough year they've had.  She told me that her mother was a young woman, and the prognosis was pretty good.
     Her mother is 43.
     I'm 43.
     Your mother is a really young woman, I said, really young.
     Fuck.