55 Year Old Woman Walking on the Bay

There’s a strange thing about getting older — inside, we still carry every version of ourselves we’ve ever been.

In this reflective episode of Stand Up and Redo with Petra DeMusz, Petra walks along the bay and reflects on what it means to be 55 years old while still somehow being 5, 8, 14, 26, and 30 all at once. The same soul. The same wonder. The same person who once ran barefoot toward the water chasing life, love, freedom, and meaning.

As the walk continues, a quiet moment with an older man and his small dog becomes something deeper — a reminder that no one is simply “old.” Every face carries decades of stories, heartbreaks, adventures, dreams, losses, laughter, and memories invisible to the outside world.

This episode is about learning to see people fully.
Not as strangers.
Not as age.
But as entire lifetimes wrapped inside a single human being.

A peaceful, thought-provoking reflection on aging, humanity, empathy, and the beautiful truth that we are all still every age we have ever been.https://youtube.com/@standupandredo?si=3RFIeWoqQTh5QScK

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there. Welcome to Stand Up and Redo with Petra Demuse. This is a podcast about trying something new, not doing the same thing over and over again, but realizing you need to do things in a different way. And you redo it, you stand up, and you redo. I'm a 55-year-old woman. My name is Petra, and I am so happy that you're here with me today. This does not have my usual intro or my usual music, and that's okay, because I want to change it up. I'm gonna stand up and redo. But I want to just dive into what I've done this week, just my own personal self. Usually I have a really intense topic that I talk about, like peace or dating or traveling. But today I just want to talk about taking a walk on the bay as a 55-year-old woman. And I'm gonna start with that. It's gonna be just this quick little essay or poem. And I hope you listen to it, especially if you're a 55-year-old person or even a 75-year-old person or 85 or maybe 45, but listen, because it's gonna be really good. A 55-year-old woman walking on the bay. She's watching the shore fishermen just throw their lines in, catching sand sharks, worshicrabs, and the occasional striper, and she's just soaking it all in, children splashing, playing in the water, porpoises, that's what we call them, but bottlenose dolphins like leaping out of the water. It's almost like a surreal scene, and it's beautiful. And guess what? Imagine that 55-year-old woman as a five-year-old little girl running down with her cousins to the shoreline, sitting her butt right in the cold puddles of the water, and diving her hand down into the sand, lifting it up and making the most elaborate, beautiful drip castle with her little cousins. No tools, only tools are her fingers, but the castles that they made were beautiful. Okay? The 55-year-old woman as an eight-year-old little girl, her and her best friend on old inner tubes that her mom got from Dallas, cheap little inner tubes that they got from the local convenience store, floating around in the bay. They don't even mind the sun is just beating down on their little tiny shoulders and their knees and their thighs as their butt sinks down between the tube into the cool water, and their fingertips and toes are just touching the water, and every so often she just tosses her head back and dips her head completely in the cold water, coming up to let the sun dry off her hair again. To have that windblown, crazy hair while floating around for hours, hours past the jetties, not even worried about it. Guess what? Mom's home cooking dinner, aunt's home cooking dinner while these little girls are floating around in inner tubes, loving it and feeling perfectly fine because no matter how far they go out, they know that they can swim back. Okay? 55-year-old woman. She's now a 14-year-old girl, meeting her cousin again to bop around on the bay with her little green string bikini. This time not building sand castles or floating around in an inner tube, but walking for miles, so conscious about burning calories and just bopping around every so often, running in and splashing in the water to cool off when they get too hot. But goodness don't want to mess up those perfect tan lines. They even spread baby oil all over themselves to get the best tan ever, which okay, let's jump to. 55-year-old woman is now 26. She has one sun-kissed child, little boy, resting on her hip in one arm. And in the other arm hand, she has two beach chairs. Somewhere on one of those shoulders, she has a giant beach bag with little peanut butter and honey sandwiches, grapes and goldfish for the kiddos, and juice boxes. And she's bopping down, two little girls running ahead, racing to the water to see who could get in first, and a big old labrador named Mako running alongside her. Actually, he wasn't that big. He was only a 65-pound lab. All going down just to immerse themselves in the shoreline of the bay. Fast forward now. 30-year-old woman, 30-year-old woman going down with her old dog Mako. He still can do it. He still can get down out there. He's 10 years old almost, and he can still get out there and swim with her. He swims with her while she jumps on her kayak. He gets up on the kayak every so often just to rest easy. It's the kind that you float on, a big goofy double kayak that she bought. She always rides in it by herself because she doesn't have anybody else to go with. Sometimes she takes her little kids with her. Sometimes she takes Mako with her. But she's 30, and this is her thing now, and she does this at night, mostly just to unwind after work. Fast forward now to the 55-year-old woman. Still the same girl all those times, still the same person, still the same dreams, same desires, still the same, but now she's 55. And as she walks along, an old man, weathered and beaten, gray hair, super crystal blue eyes, wrinkles all over his face. He's a local person, she can totally tell. She can just feel it. She just knows it. He has his little dog and he's walking along the shoreline. And he looks at her and smiles. And he's an old man. He's old. She doesn't know how old. He's over 75. But she knows that in there, somewhere in him, is a fifty-five-year-old man, a thirty-year-old man, a twenty-five-year-old man, a fourteen-year-old man, an eight-year-old man, and a five-year-old man. All in him, he has these memories and desires and hopes and dreams, just like he did as he grew up and walked along the bay. And my stand up and redo is that when I see a person, I'll realize that that moment I meet them is just one moment in a whole entire full life that they've had. And that will be my stand up and redo. Thank you.