January, for me, has always been two new beginnings. I'm not only beginning a new year, I am turning another year older. And this year it will be 70. Seventy. I am approaching with caution, and disbelief that I have only been on this planet (well, this time anyway) for 70 years.
At sixty I thought -- "ah, free at last, free at last" -- to do what I like, see what I like, eat what I like, drink what I like! I'm old enough that it doesn't matter anymore!
How quickly we learn. At sixty you may, unless you are Jane Fonda, have some health issues and some challenges that you had not foreseen. Do you need to have your gall bladder removed? Perhaps. Can you live without it? Sure...but your life will be a little different. Oh yeah...and those cataract surgeries in your fifties? So cool that you could see clearly again, but in your sixties, you may need to have some laser treatments and certainly you will have more meetings with your friendly opthamologist just to be sure all is well. But still, you can see clearly (well, not small things, but there are drug store glasses for reading and hobbies).
Approaching 70 has felt like both an achievement and a wingeing, graceless acomplishment sometimes. SEVENTY??? REALLY??? Think about it. "A 70 year-old woman was hit by a bus..." (Oh, well, she lived a good long life....) Things change, your attitude changes. I think of 70 now as the new 50, truly. Well, except....
Seventy is a good long life. But I'm not finished with it yet. There are still things to be done, things to be seen, and although I'm not one to create a list (Bucket or otherwise), I do hope to keep moving on and seeing the world with new eyes, whether or not they are a gift of medical technology or some opening up of perspective that comes through some more damn hard intentional interior emotional/intellectual/psychological work.
I retired four years ago, but I've never worked harder. Recovering from the results of years of labor outside the home leaves much undone IN the home. And the challenges and gifts of new little people and extending family are blessings and also require effort than I am sometimes not quite up to physically. But the exercise is worthy and nothing could be more worthwhile. So I keep doing those "floor" exercises (laundry, cooking, wiping noses and bottoms), and those "aerobic" exericses (breathing through personal loss, walking off stress, digging up old bones and burying them again).
So welcome 70. Bring it on. I may not always be up to everything, but I plan to be ready to say what I can do, what I can't do, and what I want to do. And that's that. Surprise me.
