The Big Six Oh

Happiest of Birthdays

On Saturday I will turn 60 and I couldn't be happier at the prospect. Despite what social media and all other superficial measures of the good life would have us believe, there is a great comfort in aging well. The obvious is that it beats the alternative but there are so many others. Wisdom that comes with age can now be sagely passed along to others, you are qualified simply by having been in existence a while to tell others precisely...how the world works. Family members who have finally grown out of asking for and needing money are now in a phase of their lives where, if you have done things well, they are trying to emulate you. I see my eldest daughter baking bread, a long held passion of mine. I see another writing, stories and journals and another choosing to teach writing at her school. Once you reach this esteemed age you become a legend, your grown children begin to say things like "How did you do it all Mum?"

Clearly they have chosen to wipe from their collective memories, most of the early days, days when the Captain was gone and we troops ate beans on toast with a fried egg and considered it a good day if two out of five of them got a bath and no one was bleeding. The mess, the lateness, the forgetfulness, all forgotten in the fog of fondness. The burnt toast and lost homework, the missed practice and the unscheduled doctor visits, the trips to the ER and the constant fighting, this has been relegated to a place in their memory that only retains the good stuff. When they were teenagers, too many of them at once for any sensible planned parent, their minds held the horrors of their upbringing like accusatory traps, a litany of offenses against them perpetrated by a neglectful poor excuse for a parental unit. How they could go on about the times I punished the wrong one or dyed a uniform shirt red with the laundry, or ran over the family dog. They could tell you to the minute how late for every pick up and drop off I had been, the number of times I took them to school in a bathrobe and once came IN to the building sans my retainer that held a temporary tooth on it, grinning mulishly at their teacher assuring him that I had indeed burned their homework. They could relate the monstrous indignity that is to suffer under the maternal leadership of one with a foreign accent. "You can come, just don't speak." Or on another occasion I was admonished not to either sneeze or blow my nose in front of her friends. Perhaps the worst suffering undertaken by a child on the face of the planet, is for your mother to get pregnant and for you and the Entire World to know how that happened. When you are the eldest of five and the arrival of the last one is announced, it is mortifying.

How soon I have forgotten years of lost sleep, years of eating bits of food from the plates of others; maternal scavenging, looking in the mirror at 4:30 in the afternoon to finally realize I only have make-up on one eye. Running to an orthodontist appointment only to discover the nails on one hand are painted but not the other. Those of us who have graduated to this phase of life have earned every nanosecond of peace, of solitude, of long hot baths alone, with wine and good jazz. We have earned the right to wear inappropriate shoes and goofy winter hats, I retired last October and have been shamelessly dressing like a toddler ever since. Except for a dress when out on a date or two with the Captain I have been in leggings and a long top or sweater non-stop. Thrown in for good measure: work out clothes, nothing with a zipper or buttons has graced this aging but now very fit old body in three months. I put jeans on yesterday and announced it, like a milestone, "Look honey, a fly and a waistband." "Very nice." he shrewdly replied not knowing why I was so proud of myself. At age sixty you have earned the right to binge watch on Netflix, to spend three hours on Facebook followed by a bowl of cookie dough for dinner and the completion of War and Peace if that is your desire.

It is a milestone birthday, you may have grand kids, you may be planning weddings, you might be watching the love of your life's parents struggle with the final leg of their life's journey. You might have lost both your parents and be an orphan. But you have seen things, you have seen information in a toilet bowl that would leave a trained Marine whimpering, you have buried dogs and cats and rabbits, you have seen defeat, and bullying, and witnessed moments of such joy that words fail you, imagination fails you but your heart has sung to the strains of your innermost Mormon Tabernacle choir with joy. You have watched a world reinvent itself, you can talk to something in your car that will tell you where to go and it's not an angry child or spouse! You can ask the dashboard to play Snow Patrol on the tiny little box hidden in the glove compartment that contains 3,000 pieces of music. You have travelled the world and found your home, you might be in a newly found home smaller and better suited to this stage of your journey. You can start a new job, leave, retire or get fired from an old one and not have to worry about being too old for a fresh beginning. Sixty is the new sixty, we are healthier, smarter and live longer than our parents did, we are more flexible than they were, we are a little more selfish and not quite so enamored of familial sacrifice as they were.

It's a tough demographic though, news every week from hence forward will contain the sad diagnoses of cancer and heart failure for those we know and love. Class mates who keep in touch will do so more often with sad news; now a cyst, here a tumor, there a mild heart attack. This stage of life requires fortitude, knowing we cannot change most of what's coming down the pike despite newly formed regimens of healthier food, vapor-only cigarettes and epic exercise routines. I have newly begun serious hiking and going to boot camp, never been fitter in my life. I get my internal sweep and external mammo every year, I look forward to the lovely sleep that is a colonoscopy and I take my vitamins!  All this is a vain attempt to forestall the inevitable. But I do give it the old college try, I will not go silently into that lunch bunch whose sole topic of conversation is ailments, afflictions and the infirm. Not for me the Prilosec, Viagra, Depends and Creme De La Femme!!! I am going commando, only take fish oil and vitamin D much to the surprise of any medical professional under the age of thirty bent on examining me for signs of my ultimate demise.

I know there are surprises awaiting me, I know my amazing family will pull through with funny cards and a couple of truly sappy ones that will "win" for making me cry. I know the Captain will fall all over himself to do something sweet and romantic and perfectly planned and it might not go so well, as these things so often don't. I know that the day will come and be filled with the greatest gift we can be given, knowing we have loved. Knowing we are loved. Happy Birthday old girl, looking good.