"Age Defying Gravity"

 

     With less than a week and half to go, I will be facing another decade.  I will be 60 years of age.  Some may not think that is a huge deal but I am looking it at as a huge milestone.  To be truthful I like the word...60.  It has a much better ring to it than other numbers have had.  20, 30, 40 all had their moments but 60 sounds comforting.  The other decades were about "people pleasing" and proving myself on a much to regular basis.  Earlier decades caused me to take life too seriously and although that has been a difficult thing to manage admittingly...60 means bringing an end to fear.  I hope.

     This past year has been fearful for all of us.  But the year I was born, 1961, I became a "baby boomer" and the following happened:

•  American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus.
• Apollo program: President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.
• Alan Shepard makes the first U.S. Space Flight.
• Niagra Falls starts producing hydroelectric power
• Construction of the Berlin Wall begins.
• The Peace Corps is established by President John Kennedy.
• The first electric tooth brush was introduced by General Electric.
• I was born...March 2, 1961 at 12:29 a.m.  The youngest of three daughters to Edward and Malvina Taschler, born at Vassar Brothers Hospital, Poughkeepsie, New York.  I was born a week early, which I might add set the tone for the rest of life...good, old-fashioned impatience.  
  

        Approaching 60 years of age, makes all that more determined to do more if I only knew what that "more" was.  Planning only gets you so far and then life has a way of taking you in another direction.  What I hope for is to be much like my grandmother was.  Strong, chopping wood in her 90's.  Not that chopping wood is on my agenda, but she never stopped until...unti she stopped.  She was 98.  If only I will be that lucky.  Actually, luck probably had nothing to do with Gramma's longevity. She kept busy, ate everything that was home grown.  She was a farmer.  Everything she cooked was home made and never processed.  She loved her home and the land she lived on and she loved her family.  When Ma brought me home, I was five pounds literally,  I spent the first days of my life in an incubator.  (No wonder I feel uncomfortable in small spaces.)  Ma, as she tells the story, brought me into Gramma and said, "Maria, she's so little! What will be do?"  Gramma looked at my mother and said , "We'll keep her Mickey.  We'll keep her."

     60 years seems like an awful long time but now I understand just how quickly it all happens.  One minute you are 14 wanting to be all grown and independent and free and the next minute, you are approaching 60 with your husband curled up watching television and thinking that this is really all you ever wanted.  Of course, the very thing that keeps me going, is I do in fact need and want to do more.  Life is busy.  Home is busy.  Teaching is definitely busy and sadly, I am doubtful few believe me when I say that but it is true.  I am grateful that I still have the same energy I had 14 years ago and to find the strength to handle what my teacher friends and I handle each and every day.  Even more significantly, I realized that it is acceptable to be tired.  When you are tired, you need to just stop and heal.  Stop and heal.

     I try to find comfort in aging by walking and writing and loving those who are in my life.  60 has made me grateful for my health, my well-being and my stubbornness to continue.  I am stubborn.  I think that is why I was born a week early.  I couldn't wait to get started on my journey, complicated and beautiful as it is.  At 60, I know that I have handled the heartbreaks, the joys and the disappointments and I am sure there will be more...hopefully.  Like the day I was born, a week early, I do not want to miss one damn thing.  I will not leave this life without joy, music and gratitude.  I promise everyone that.  I promise myself that!

     I will be counting down the days until March 2, 2021.  I am each day, one day, closer to another decade of change and adaptation.  Know that those who are in my life, even at 60, are loved and cherished.  No one is promised a single thing.  The grace of aging, means that we find joy and we find gratitude in what is right in front of us.  Maybe...just maybe, this will be the year I stop coloring my hair...or not.