ON TO THE SIXTIES

The sun is setting over the final hours of life in my 50's. At 4:25 on Friday morning, I turn 60. I keep saying these words to myself over and over and still they sound hollow and empty. But this change of decade seems harder than the rest. Oh, it's probably because I've never been here before and all the other decades are in the past. But when I say 60's, all I can imagine is free love, long hair hanging in my eyes, the fear in my parent's eyes, bell bottoms and beads and the change in the music. Woodstock was actually in 1969...so the images I have of the sixties are really the late sixties unless I care to recall the horrors in Life Magazine of racial tensions escalating as the work towards civil rights began in ernest. Strangely, I still feel like the same person...a shy, awkward, adolescent that cares way too much about what other people think and not nearly enough about how I feel. I can tap into her in a flash. She hovers around the periphery of things weighing out how it looks, how she feels, whether or not it's worth diving into and usually deciding that the risk of embarrassment is just too high given the learning curve to achieve mastery. Thank God we all get old. At least the wisdom of experience brings true learning and all that the nervous teenager carefully crosses out as weird, dull, old fashioned is entered gracefully as our children bring us up to our full human stature. I must say...my kids did more to make me the adult I am today than my parents did. It's almost like we are cartoon sketches of ourselves in adolescence with an emphasis on the defining lines...me/not me. But it takes your 20's, 30's and 40's to work out the substance and the colors and the facial expressions that reveal the heart truthfully. As a teenager, I smoked. It was part of being cool. Of pretending not to care. It was self preservation in a family of smokers because the smell wasn't nearly as bad as if you didn't smoke. So I couldn't beat em...so I joined em. I cared more about the looks of the package than what was inside. But that was a result of the focus of the times. For years, as a girl...it was all about looks. Looks and books. I had a need. From the time I was 10 years old, I had to have blank books for filling. I liked to write poems or jot down observations...or note a profound thought.  Something in me always reached for what was inside and if nothing was there, I'd make it up. Now there are three shelves of spiral bound, hard bound, cloth bound and even metal bound books hidden away in an upstairs closet. Because my mother was always busy with her 5 daughters...I tended to try to figure things out for myself. Besides...parents in those days usually focused on themselves. It was the era of children being seen but not heard...in other words, keeping silence. I spent inordinate time alone trying to figure things out by writing and by listening to music. Words have always been important and yet frustrating tools of communication. So what am I saying? I'm saying that I feel no different. I still feel that 18 year old perched on the threshold of adulthood. I still feel the awkwardness, self consciousness, judgements, doubts and hang-ups. Standing on the threshold of old age about to be 60...I am plagued with the same mental traps, knots and confusions. I am scared to enter old age as I was scared to enter adulthood as I was scared to enter motherhood. From this older vantage point I have the experience to know not to be defined by my fears and yet I still must wrestle the same forces that chew on my thoughts...sew seeds of self doubt...and try to convince me that I shouldn't care. I care. I care a lot. I care so much that even the candidates debates can send me to my room with memories of arguing parents and endless bickering about things that don't seem so important. I see the patterns. I see the growth rings. I see the spiral's upward spin and I know that each stage brings opportunities to become something more than we've ever been before and the stage always comes inconveniently...I'm never quite ready to jump when the time to jump comes...and yet I must jump. That is the only way to enter the flow...just jump and go with it. So here I am watching the sun go down on my 50's and still trying to understand what it was all about and in two day's I will turn 60 and another 10 year cycle begins anew. If I keep watching the sun set...will I miss the dawn. That is my fear...that my moment will come and I'll miss it because I'm so focused on a moment that happened last week or last night. They way it was always seems to could the way it is. You'd think knowing this would make it easy for someone to jump into the now...especially after practicing entering 6 decades. But it isn't easy. It is a daily challenge to be fully present to the present and yet it seems to be the key to being fully alive. So this is my birthday wish as I enter my 6th decade...I wish to be fully present to the now in looks and books, because I am still that cartoon teenager no matter how old I get and my 87 year old mother probably is too.  On your mark, get set....