The Sunny Side of Sixty
It’s Time
It’s time. I’s 63 years old and a lifelong writer. It seems I have written about every subject under the sun — but one. Myself.
I recently came upon a five-year diary I was given in grade school when I was about 10. It was four-by-five-inches in size with a gold lock and key. Each page had about six lines for each of the five years of that date. My diary entries lasted just a few months. I became frustrated when I ran out of lines just as I was getting going on my day and did not believe I should spill over into the next year’s lines. The thought of boldly filling the page without regard to the rules of a five-year diary must not have entered my mind. Anyway, I realized early on I’d rather write about other people than myself.
Contrast this with my husband, who has been freely filling page after page of journals since he was 13. He used blank books filled with lines. No rules for how much or how often to write. And he wrote about everything. I blush at some of it even now. However, 50 years later, those journals are a precious collection of memories that capture the life of an American boy growing up in the ’60s and ’70s. He continues with journal entires today, although those of recent decades are more sporadic and focus mostly on major events in our family.
It’s too late for me to do anything that sweeping. My best hope is to reflect on my life in my sixties. This is a strange time in my life, which I have had felt a nagging nudge to record. My total knee replacement in April has forced an acknowledgement of the aging process. Learning weeks later I was going to be a grandmother by year’s end brought another set of emotions I have not yet encountered.
My life has unfolded in a way that has allowed me the luxury of being in denial about growing older. Married at 32, babies at 37 and months shy of 42. While friends were sending kids to college, I was driving my youngest to elementary school. Today she is in college when friends are moving to retirement communities and attending the weddings of grandchildren.
A good hairdresser who has deftly covered my graying hair for decades, and a genetic disposition to a complexion sans wrinkles have also enabled this denial.
I’m facing it now. I am now in my sixties. It’s in front of me and I’m going to embrace it. I’m not upset or down. This is an adventure. Join me as I explore it.