Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.
–David Bowie

This is sixty.

60 is more freedom than I’ve ever had. Really. It’s awesome.

60 is not just feeling the same but feeling better than I have in years.

60 is thinner skin–actually not metaphorically.

60 is loving my new MacBook Pro with touchbar a little too much.

60 is not yet having used age as a reason I can’t do something.

60 is wanting to do just as many things as I wanted to do at 15.

60 is wondering why, still, I’m preoccupied with freedom.

60 is starting to think hashtag before pound.

60 is having lived 21,900 days. Which doesn’t seem like so many. If anyone had asked me I would have guessed a person lived hundreds of thousands of days. But then math is not my strong suit.

60 is my own small house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the very tip of Cape Cod, as far as you can go without falling into the sea.

60 is wearing peace sign earrings and a nevertheless she resisted bracelet.

60 is having not as many days as I have lived still to live.

60 is googling life expectancy. Did you know the longer you live the more years they give you?

60 is 4 adult children—all off on their own—plus a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, and girlfriends. And liking them ALL.

60 is four grandchildren. But we are not your mothers’ grandmothers; we are grandmothers who facetime from airplanes.

60 is, as Cal says, one day older than I was yesterday.

60 is walking in the women’s march.

60 is finally liking yoga.

60 is liking socks.

60 is contributing to the ACLU on a monthly basis.

60 is taking 3 prescriptions–for blood pressure, for eyes, and  for hypothyroidism.

60 is still loving to travel–all the movement and that moment the wheels lift off the ground.

60 is strength training twice a week.

60 is feeling happy.

60 is resisting.

60 is still wanting adventure.

60 is almost never wearing makeup.

60 is finally, finally finding clothes that are comfortable, that look good on me, and that look like me–black leggings, a short little black skirt, a long top, and these kick-ass black ankle boots. That is, when I wear something other than black exercise pants.

60 is more adverbs.

60 is 32 years of marriage and still liking each other. He still makes me laugh. 

60 is being born in 1957, the same year as Caroline Kennedy and Princess Caroline of Monaco.

60 is remembering each of the years and understanding that they add up to 60, that they add up to me.

60 is listening to my body instead of telling my body what to do. It’s resting instead of pushing. It’s eating more vegetables, doing qigong energy movements, and having my body say finally. It’s being amazed as, after a year of trying, the weight just falls off.

60 is listening to Sarah Jaffe’s Clementine, The Killer’s Human, the Branches Darlin’, and Roo Panes’ I Was Here…

60 is preparing to do one last revision on novel #4.

60 is knowing the correct form is to put the names of songs in quotes but liking the way they look in italics better.

60 is adding coconut oil, cinnamon, and turmeric to my coffee.

60 is using the word still a lot.

60 is 6 decades on this planet.

60 is gratitude for each of those days in each of those years.

60 is not yet 70 or 80 or 90. It’s not yet 100.

60 is spending a month in my small house on the water.

60 is being excited about the year ahead and the rest of the journey.

~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

–Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

THIS IS 60

X

this was 58

this was 57

Continued appreciation to Lindsey Mead for the inspiration.

Hey there. Hope you’re all well. Tell me what you’ve been up to!

Hard to believe it’s been almost a year since I wrote anything in this space other than the introduction to the next writer in the series. But I just double checked. I finished my year of posts, came back on February 20, 2016 to check in, and then faded into the background. I regret that. And I miss you all.

What has caused me to come here tonight is something I marked on my calendar at the first of the year. 60 days from today, if my luck holds out, I turn 60.

That is also hard to believe.

Really hard to believe.

I started the year sick and stressed, with extra pounds from a thyroid issue and the holidays. I needed an intervention, and I gave myself one–3 days at Canyon Ranch. Days that were not just about exercise and massage–I also went to lectures on nutrition and memory. I had acupuncture. I did Qigong. And as part of a thank you to my body for carrying me this far, I’ve been eating for health for almost a month. And I haven’t let not being perfect stop me.

Even as recently as my 40’s, I looked at people in their 60’s and thought OLD. But scouting ahead for those behind me, some encouraging news. With 60 days to go, I don’t feel any different than I did when I turned 40 or 50.

Despite all that’s going on in the world, I’ve been breathing. And not writing but refilling the well. And I feel better than I have in two years.

~

the first in a series of posts during the 60 days leading to my 60th birthday

~

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver