Crow’s Feet Prompt #74

I Have Approximately 4,380 Fresh Starts Left

I mean to savor each one.

Photo by Andrus Lukas on Unsplash

Social Security’s actuarial tables peg me, at 76, to live another 11.83 years. Ever the optimist, I’m rounding that up to twelve years. That’s over four thousand sunrises ahead. Over four thousand new days.

There are a lot of fresh starts ahead of me.

Not every day feels like a fresh start. Some days feel like a carryover of the same crappy package; ongoing aching health conditions, the unrelenting concerns that partner with the grim realities of aging, and reversals that feel like permanent setbacks.

Sometimes, a fresh start is embedded in adversity.

I’m recovering slowly from a leg injury that immobilized me at first. The “I can’t believe this has happened” accident three months ago hardly seemed like a “fresh start.” It felt more like a massive slug of lousy luck with an overlay of my impatience. A fresh start was incubating every day, but I couldn’t see it.

I was unaware that the daily incremental progress of healing was a figurative tiny step forward, the first building molecule of a “fresh start.”