The Birthday that Was

Turning 60 was and wasn’t a big deal. I’ve spoken of that already….but have just a mite more to say.

Itza milestone, yet not in the same way it was a decade ago. 60 is now considered middle aged…having been 50…I don’t mind 60 is middle aged…I rather like imagining myself with 20 or so more years of actively living life in me. (though, I do clearly remember a not so long ago where that was not true.).

My mother is 81, and while admittedly more frail than a year ago, still going strong. Women on my mom’s side have always lived into their 80’s and beyond. Realistically, I can expect pretty much the same barring the universe having other ideas. (which would, clearly, not mirror my own.)

What struck me more about this birthday was the tenor of the cards I received from my grown children. The same smart aleckiness on the outside with more unexpectedly introspective thought inside than is their usual greeting card fare:

“Six-OH!! I can only hope that when I turn 60 that I can say that I have as much fun & adventure as you have had and are still having. You haven’t lost that sense of wonder & whimsy – I don’t think you ever will.” From my normally reticent 30 year old son. Thank you son. I think neither will you.

“Happy Birthday to my “hippie” mom. I thought of those patched up jeans you used to love to wear when I was a kid. They seemed to symbolize that bit of conventional rebellion you posses. Always something to add a “twist” to any outfit. Maybe a splash of color with your purple socks. You taught me to look at the world open and positively. All things are possible. The world wouldn’t be so colorful without you!!” From my 38 year old daughter. Ahem…’scuse me a sec…sniff, sniff…sumfin inna my eye.

Parents often wonder the impact they’ve had on their children. Mine could not have given me better gifts than their view of what the world looks like to them through my eyes.

In the years that have passed since Jim died in 2002, I have been challenged to consider how my actions have colored their own world. That they can still see some of that old me in the new one gives me hope that I have not done so badly in showing them that life is still life even through the life altering loss of their father in all our lives.

What ever happens next, my children have given me a beautiful gift in their words and I take some comfort in knowing I may have actually done good after all.

To life and love and laughter.

The Walrus & the Carpenter

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.” Alice in Wonderland

This particular verse from Alice has always spoken to me in times of reflection or change…it seemed appropriate to where I’ve been these last 2 weeks as I’ve been mentally walkabout sifting through thoughts, holding memories, wading back in time and touching places dear to my heart.

The time from Thanksgiving through pretty much past Christmas Day has power over me in that it brings back the year we met, shared 6 day apart birthdays, fell in love and began to make our plans for the day our lives would be lived as a couple. Thanksgiving 1969…I opened the front door to the next page of my life, which changed the instant I looked into those electric blue eyes and I never looked back until the day he died in May 2002.

I suppose my turning 60 yesterday and his being forever 51 had some small measure of responsibility for bringing on the thoughts more deeply than usual. Not so much that the number of my age is the cause…it’s a number and I have a wonderful role model in my 81 year old mother for why age and how you feel about it is often a matter of the mind…a number that represents the passage of time on this planet. It had more to do, I think with the fact that he will not see any of these years nor those to come.

Speaking to a dear friend, I told her that he was, at 51, in that place in his life where he was so content and comfortable in himself and in his own skin that he made others feel that way in theirs as well. I envy that a bit as I still, sometimes, feel alien in my own shell. Could he speak to me today, I think he would tell me, that all is as it is supposed to be and that his time had come to move on to what ever was next in this universe for him. He would tell me that life is out there and that I should reach out and grab it with both hands. That there is still magic and wonder to be experienced if I will let it be so. At least, it’s what I choose to believe.

8 ½ years now, I have been widowed…it once colored every aspect of my life…still does many. My children have flown the nest, making lives, mistakes and successes just as they should. And, though my grand still needs me for another year or so, it is time to figure out the next pages of this book and where the adventure goes from here. Time to make plans and dream dreams. That I get to do this with another heart once wounded as mine, feeling loved and being cherish, is a gift I never expected to share again. Once in this lifetime was something…but…twice…is…well…something spectacularly else.

I believe Jim would be happy Handyman and I managed to find each other in this oh, so crazy and jumbled universe by way of widowhood and WN. I know he believed that people can brought together though it seems they never should have met. He saw my graduation picture so many years ago…before he ever met me and 3,000 miles across the country from where I was…and told a friend “that’s the girl I’m going to marry.” I have to believe so too…I dreamed of him all through my childhood and teen aged years… a nebulous sort of shadowed being that filled my dreams at night…and never had the dream again the day I opened that front door…almost as if I’d dreamed him into life.

My Handyman was met on a whim of a trip to a meeting of also widowed in January, 2004. He touched a chord that drew us into a long distance friendship that changed to something else entirely the next time we met some months later. He took my hand to help me from the car, the electricity thrummed my skin and…oh, shit…I wuz 55 and gone again just as if I was 18. 6 years later, we are loving the life we are creating together and look forward to as many years as we are gifted to be together.

This year’s light melancholy has served well in reminding me of the joy of my past life and that of this current life. I am blessed to have both. All in all not such a bad ending to a 60^th birthday rumination.