Tuesday, January 15, 2013

200 Days and Counting


A milestone is a marker; the end of one thing, the beginning of another.
 I am approaching a big one and working on embracing it.


I didn’t mind at all turning forty. Fifty, to be honest, bothered me. Suddenly 49 sounded young and 50 – old. A half century. That IS old.  It was just the months ahead of it that were troubling. By the time it hit, I had filed it under ‘Oh well, it beats the alternative.’ It took another five years until I was ready to actually celebrate it … and that I did. I also settled very comfortably into it.

I enjoyed the entire “F Series” – forties & fifties. I loved them. I reclaimed Me. Actually, I found Me. I had no time for that at all in the T Series – Teens, Twenties, Thirties … three decades of getting established, of ‘becoming’. You would hope that would be quite enough time for that.

 By the ‘F’s’ – I was. I am.  Still growing, still becoming – that never ends. But it’s with a different perspective – a cultivated and nurtured wisdom in knowing some of the things I have been blessed to have been allowed to stay here long enough to garner.

And now, I approach the ‘S series’. All too quickly.Yes, ALL too quickly. I remember my Dad on his 74th birthday saying to me: “You won’t believe how fast it goes.” I was twenty six. Years were longer then, and although I heard him, I didn't appreciate how true his words were.

I have been less than enthusiastic about the approach of Sixty.  My friends that I went to high school with are still teenagers in my mind; my college friends the same. In my head I am the same age as somehow my children have gotten to be. Although my body would beg to differ. Sixty sounds old. Although, I am sure on my 70th birthday it will sound young, just as 50 does to me now.

Sixty is getting too close to the edge, to the end. Brian’s Dad left us at 60; my Mom was 62; Brian’s Mom was 69. The sixties haven’t been very kind to our family.  I thought too of my siblings who never got to see 50, or 20 – or some of them even 10. Life sometimes has not been very kind to our family.

 Then I thought of my Dad, who bought a farm at 62 and started a whole new life. And his sister Ruth, who celebrates her 96th birthday the day after tomorrow – not only with excellent health, but with a vibrantly rich and full life. We're having a pajama party for her birthday. She would think that 60 is still a child.

I have switched gears. I am going to EMBRACE 60. I’m excited about 60. If I say that often enough, I will convince myself.

What I have determined to do is to unload some stuff that I have been dragging along with me through my Ts & Fs. The Ss are going to call for a lighter load.

I have numbered the calendar.
 I have 200 days to unpack.

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