It’s a disconcerting feeling to turn 65. I’m not complaining. After all, it’s great to be alive. It’s just that, in a weird irrational way, I never thought I would be this old. I suppose I imagined that I would reach some mythically perfect age – say, 55 – and just hold there. The “reaching” part worked out quite well. It’s the “hold” part that the universe bungled. I kept aging. Year after year until reaching this Medicared benchmark. So far. Which is to say that I have no immediate interest in stopping the process. Who knows, for example, what 70 might hold – or 100?
And really, 65 turns out to be quite lovely. I’m healthy – never mind the extra pounds I could do without. I’m blissfully happy. I can still get out of a chair without assistance. I am blessed with a cradling circle of loving and encouraging family and friends. I’m immersed in pursuits that nourish and enlarge. I feel more generative than perhaps at any other season of my life – growing things, writing new thoughts, creating new possibilities, dreaming about new destinations and innovations and ideas and experiences. Which should not be surprising. These days greet me with more opportunity than responsibility; more invitation than demand. There is an evocative space in these days that was almost certainly present all along, but within those earlier frames of employment and breadwinning and resumé-building and parenting, failing and recovering and, let’s face it, growing up myself, wasn’t always privileged with attention.
And so I will embrace the strangeness of this birthday, and nestle into the loving embrace of those in my circle. It really is good to be here – feeling not merely my own pulse but that of the life around me; looking and listening and brooding and breathing; noticing and imagining and exploring and touching and discerning the greening yet emergent in these autumn days.
Welcome, then, 65. I look forward to getting to know you.
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