I turned 60 this month and I feel great. Not only physically (ok, I have a few new aches and pains) but mentally. When I married my husband almost six years ago, I remember sitting at the breakfast table the day after our wedding and asking him if he felt different. I told him that I did. I told him I felt like the circle was complete. I looked at his wedding band (which was my fathers wedding band) and I told him I never felt like that circle was complete before, there was always something missing, like the circle that the wedding band represents never came fully around to meet the other side. I now felt that completeness in my life and in my heart, with him.

So, now I’m sixty!   Sixty!! I can’t believe it, and somehow I feel rejuvenated! I have no idea why.  I’m feeling like I did that morning sitting at the breakfast table with my husband.  Like a new and wonderful shift has just occured.

I compartmentalize my life into decades. It seems as I enter each new decade in my life I feel something different. In my 20’s, I had everything and a lifetime ahead of me. My choices were endless. I had no idea what I was doing but I felt unlimited potential.

My thirties was a rough decade. I felt like, “well, I’m not in my 20’s anymore, I’m no longer cool.” I realized that when I was getting my hair cut one day and the girl cutting my hair said something like, “well don’t you look cute with you mom jeans and tennis shoes on!” I think she meant it as a compliment but I felt overweight, tired and ugly wearing my big plastic glasses that I had to start wearing after the birth of my daughter.  In a short time I had my second child, my son.    I hadn’t really gained a lot of weight after having my kids but everything shifted and got soft. I would look in the mirror and feel ugly. No one told me otherwise.

Then my forties rolled around. I had kind of recuperated from my thirties. I realized I wasn’t cool anymore and I accepted that. I realized that yes my body had shifted and changed but I still wasn’t doing to bad for my age and compared to some of my friends I was doing pretty good.   I had a good job, was making decent money, enough to cover the bills anyway. I never had enough for the “extras” and every month life felt pinched. That got more difficult as the two kids got older and started “wanting” more things.   It’s hard to say no when all their friends seemed to have everything they wanted whenever they wanted.

The strain of those kinds of demands and the kids being in their teenage years was starting to ware on me. The strain of “life” was beginning to bare down. My spouse was for all intents and purposes “checked out.” I was basically becoming a single parent to my children; I had an angry teenage son, and a daughter who thankfully took life in stride. She was my anchor. I don’t know if she ever really knew that, but I drew a lot of strength from her, and I still do (She’s thirty now.)

As I was just scraping by that decade my fifties hit. Whoopie, I get a big surprise party (that I didn’t want) and a month later, just after a miserable Thanksgiving holiday my spouse informed me he didn’t want to be married to me any more. Well, welcome to my fifties!   After an even more miserable next three months he left for good. Well, okay, I asked (told) him to leave for good. He wasn’t there anyway, for any of us and we needed to move on.   Apparently he did to, because  we haven’t seen him since. Ouch…. I used to cry, but at some point I made the healthy decision that he would not get any more of my thoughts, energy or tears.

So my fifties was a big turning point. I became single, my kids were forced onto the fast track to become amazing, independent young adults. The three of us bonded in so many wonderfully special ways it’s hard to describe. My son and daughter began to love and protect each other fiercely, and I mean fiercely. If you were to look at one of them cross- eyed, the other one would be there to protect and defend. It was amazing to watch. My daughter became my caretaker for a time when I wasn’t able to care for myself. I was so devastated by what seemed like the total destruction of the life I knew that I was only functioning.   I smile and am thankful at the many times she put a bowl of oatmeal or a bowl of soup in front of me and said, “mom, here…you need to eat this, you need to eat something.” I will be forever grateful for her nurturing me during that ugly time.

And, I will be forever grateful to my son for “manning up” and becoming the pillar of strength that I needed him to be. He became the “man of the house” and he watched over me with caring protectiveness.

The three of us struggled and battled our way through that time. We grew strong and fierce and life moved forward. My daughter met her now husband during that “fifties decade.” They are married now with two children.

I reached out to the man I had dated right out of high school, when I was 17 and he was 20. We had dated for five years before going our separate ways. (there is another story)   We reconnected, dated for four years and have been married now for six years. During the dating time, he performed the marriage of “our” daughter to her husband, he has become grandpa to our two grandchildren and he has bonded and helped “our” son with a business venture. And somewhere in there I retired from my job of 20 years. We are a family and life is good.

And, now?…I turned 60!!   I turned 60 and I feel like this is a new decade that will consist of wonderful new life experiences and adventures.   So far, I’ve had lunch with my best friend who I worked with for 17 years, my husband and I had dinner with a friend of my husbands from many, many years ago and his wife. They are fabulous funny people who are moving to Hawaii! I see adventure there! I had a birthday dinner with my husband at Bella Bru, we had a fabulous waitress and fabulous dessert! I had In and Out with my mom (93 yrs young) yesterday after we went shopping. That’s her new favorite hang out. We’re meeting up with our daughter and her husband tonight for another dinner and soon we are leaving for Maine!!

Yes, my sweet husband asked me what I wanted to do for my 60^th birthday and I said I’d like a nice lobster dinner. He said, okay, “I’ll make a reservation.” I said, “no, you don’t understand, I want a really good lobster dinner!” Next thing I know we’re booking a trip to Maine.   Is he the best or what!?

So you see, life at sixty is beginning with a new adventure! I’ll tell you all about our trip when we get back. It’s gonna be great! This decade is gonna be great!!

Life is truly like a wave.   You have to roll with the plan that is your life. I firmly believe that we each have a road map for our lives. Our life maps are determined by God before we are even born.   God has given us “free will”, so it’s up to us to decide how we are going to deal with and handle the plan that was laid out for us. I know for a fact that we can live in joy and peace while all this ugly stuff is going on in our lives. That joy and that peace is an inner peace that only comes from God.

That joy and that peace for me, comes when I spend time in Gods word. That is the time that God talks to me, not literally, but within me.   It is another one of those things that is hard to explain, you really have to live it and open yourself up to it.   Open yourself up to God and amazing things will happen. When I say that, I mean amazing things will happen within you. You will be changed. You will look at people differently, as if you see them through Gods eyes. It’s amazing.

I thank God for bringing me to this point in my life. I will never understand why things happen the way they do. I now understand that I cannot “control” things. I understand now that I have to roll with those waves that come in and out of our lives. Those waves that are sometimes seemingly insurmountable and the waves that are insignificant. I have learned to trust God and let him take me where he wants me to go and to become the person he wants me to be. It’s an ongoing never-ending process. As the saying goes, I’m not were I need to be, but I’m not where I used to be.   Something like that, anyway.

God is good… life is good.

Note:

If you want to see the article in it’s entirety go to:

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0130/031.html

I’m caught somewhere between my 92 year old mother and my 29 year old daughter. My mother is sentimental and saves things. This really hit me when I helped her put up her Christmas tree this year and the “topper” as she calls it was in a box labeled “1953.” This was the year my mother and father were married and that would make the “topper” 63 years old.

A week or so later I was talking to my daughter on the phone and she said she got rid of all her old Christmas tree decorations and purchased all new ones this year. That pretty much answered the question as to whether or not she would like to have some of the ornaments I hung on the tree when she was a child. The response is always the same, “no thanks mom, I’m good.” I understand her thought; she loves the memories but just doesn’t want the clutter.

I used to be like my mother and found it heartwarming to save and cherish the ornaments I collected through the years. Each one seemed to have a little memory of some sort attached to it. Each year as I would hang ornaments on the tree I would travel down memory lane. It was sweet.

As we all know life can turn on a dime. It did just that for me a few years ago. I found myself remarried in my mid-fifties to an amazing man who my children and son-in-law, who I count as a son, adopted as their own and who shares two beautiful grandchildren with me. They adore him. So for the past couple of years what used to be a wonderful tradition of hanging ornaments while traveling down memory lane turned into a sour task. Hanging ornaments that held so many memories became a torture of sorts.

I have shifted from my mothers’ frame of mind of saving and cherishing things to my daughters’ frame of mind of hold and release. Both have their benefits but in the end I have come to realize that my daughter is one smart cookie. It saddens me to watch my 92-year-old mother agonize over whom she wants to give her cherished possessions before she passes away. It gives her a sense of peace to know where her things are going but at the same time she is so sad and realizes that years of saving physical things doesn’t really matter in the end.

As I have released “things” in my life I have felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. So this is the year I left all my ornaments each wrapped in tissue in their boxes. I bought a pack of green, red and gold bulbs, made some paper chains, bought a string of white lights and started fresh. And, I fell free.

I thank my mother for instilling in me the thought that memories should be cherished and loved.   And, I thank my daughter for teaching me that we can hold things loosely and make good loving memories without the “things.”

I guess the lesson for me is to love your things, cherish the memories they hold for you but let them go, move forward and realize it’s the people you love and the people that love you that really matter.

It was August 24^, 1977 the day we strolled through the California State Fair. I honestly don’t remember much other than we were together, happy and enjoying the day. We were young and had been dating for two years. I was just out of high school when we met, a mere 17 years young and inexperienced in life. He was a mature almost 21-year-old worldly and handsome.

I don’t know what prompted us to stop. Neither of us had much money at that time in our lives to spend on extras. Every time I reflect on that day I am so very, very thankful that for whatever reason we stopped at that cutting edge, modern computer photo booth with the classy dot matrix printer.

The man seated us next to each other getting us ready to take our picture, you know, like a school picture. Only, it wasn’t exactly a picture. We watched as he looked at his computer screen and then…back and forth, back and forth the computer printer went back and forth, back and forth. When it was done the man tore the paper off of the printer and handed it to us.

There we were, young and naïve, not knowing what our future held. We stood there starring at that black and white image of ourselves. It was done mostly in hash tags with some commas, and slashes thrown in. When it was done it looked like a pencil sketch.   It was a picture of us forever capturing us in that moment.

I am so thankful for that picture and that memory. You see, we continued to date for a few more years. Then life happened and we went our separate ways and lived our lives apart, not seeing or hearing from each other for nearly thirty years. Neither of us forgot the other and as life would have it we came back together one day.  It was like no time had ever passed between us and we picked up where we left off.   We were older, wiser and still in love.

That picture is now framed and hangs on the wall of our bedroom so every time we enter the room it’s the first thing we see. Again, each time I look at that picture, I am thankful for that day in 1977 at the California State Fair, thankful that we found each other again and thankful that God kept us safe and ready for the day we reunited.

We stopped trying to figure out why or how things happen the way they do. I can only speak for myself but I thank God everyday for the second chance I have been given to love this man that got away from me so many years ago.   Every time I walk into our bedroom and look at that picture I smile and I am thankful.