The process of turning 65 comes with a duality. You want to look forward, but increasingly you find yourself looking back. An awareness of mortality, shaped by reality. On average, a 65 year old male in the United States will live another 17 years – an increase of 4 years since the time we were born, which seems trivial given the speed at which years pass nowadays but is probably as significant as the 2.5°F increase in the earth’s temperature over the same time period.
The 17-year estimate is a conditional statistic, of course, different from the average life expectancy of males born in 1959-1960 – to wit, you are part of the select sample who have already made it to 65. I could add filters to produce a more fine-grained estimate, but with 65 years of observational data at your fingertips, it doesn’t take much data sense to have a pretty good understanding of where you fall on that particular normal curve. In other words, I’m hitting the ‘Save’ button after every paragraph or so when I write these days.
But having lived my life by the mantra of the Dead Poets’ Society – Carpe Diem! – it’s too late baby now, it’s too late to adopt the persona of a tortured poet, and just stop trying, regardless of how many or how few diesmight be left before the day that I die.
A New Generation
We grew up in the sixties with the stirring phase from JFK’s inaugural address fresh in our minds:
“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”
We watched the world changing around us in the 60s and 70s, oftentimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, a lot of times in ways that we didn’t and still don’t understand. We were ready to take that torch and find our place among that new generation of Americans.
When the time came, however, we found that torches aren’t passed, they have to be seized; and as runts of the Baby Boom litter, we rarely found ourselves in the best position to do the seizing. As we set out on our journeys, foundations we regarded as bedrock turned out to be sand, sometimes quicksand. It rained all night the day we left, the weather it was dry. The sun so hot, we froze to death. A generation lost in space and stuck in place, we struggled just to find our footing and left most of the seizing to the next generation.
We turned to our families.
Where we learned that the passing of mantles between generations is always fluid, can be chaotic, and is never quite what we expected or planned for.
On my father’s side of the family, his only brother, my uncle and godfather, sits alone. He celebrated his 94th birthday last weekend. On my mother’s side, the much larger side of our family, her generation of seven siblings just came to an end last fall with the passing of her brother-in-law. Uncle Skip, the Connecticut farmer in our family, the only one of my aunts and uncles not born and raised in Boston; the first to move his family to the suburbs in the 1960s, the first to leave Massachusetts (for Florida) in pursuit of a retirement dream. In full transparency, I do have another living uncle-by-marriage on that side of the family, but he and my aunt divorced over forty years ago. He is very much a part of the family circle of his three daughters and their children, As for my circle, he was clearly in for 20 years, clearly out for about 40, now in old age, it’s a gray area. Fluid.
Family connections were much more fragile than they seemed when we were younger. I grew up, through college, with three generations living in the same house. All of my aunts, uncles, and cousins lived within a short drive. Now I have a sister living somewhere in southern California. At last count, cousins were spread across eight states.
The oldest of my cousins are in their 70s and the youngest are fast approaching 60. At 30, my daughter is among the youngest in the next generation, and there is already a booming generation following hers, of which and whom I know precious little. Truth be told, there may even be a fifth generation in play. The math works out. I’ll have to check on that.
Which brings me back to me, sitting in my little town, in my little corner, in my own little chair.
I’m Sitting on Top of the World
At sixty-five, here I sit gazing at the Maine spring and listening to the brightly songbirds who land on the tree outside my office window, I have two songs running through my head. Strangely, neither of them by Taylor Swift, and although their messages couldn’t be more different, they share the same title – Top of the World.
One was released by The Carpenters in 1972:
Such a feelin’s comin’ over me
There is wonder in most every thing I see
Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes
And I won’t be surprised if it’s a dream
Everything I want the world to be
Is now comin’ true especially for me
And the reason is clear, it’s because you are here
You’re the nearest thing to heaven that I’ve seen
I’m on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I’ve found, ever since you’ve been around
Your love’s put me at the top of the world
The other by The Chicks was recorded in 2002. As stated in the intro: “It’s sung from the perspective of a man who’s passed on. And he’s looking back at his life and wishing he had done things differently and treated the people in it, a little better.”
I wished I was smarter
I wished I was stronger
I wished I loved Jesus
The way my wife does
I wish it had been easier
Instead of any longer
I wished I could have stood
where you would have been proud
But that won’t happen now
That won’t happen now
I relate to both songs. I am more than happy with my past, the choices that I made along the way and the place and space where my wife and I are today. I am thrilled with the life we have shared with our daughter and optimistic and excited for the future that she is carving out for herself.
At the same time, I wish I could have been smarter, stronger, maybe a little more comfortable with people and a little less with numbers, a little less imperfect…
As I said at the top, sixty-five is a duality.
I’m glad that I heard The Carpenters in the 1970s and The Chicks while driving around Texas in 2002. In that order. Right place. Right time.
And I’m glad I have the memory of family gatherings with the kitchen, dining room, and parlor in our apartment filled to overflowing, my sister sitting at the piano, and my uncles, a couple of highballs or or Drambuie under their belts, belting out tunes like
And I’m sitting, sitting on top, top of the world
I’m rolling along, rolling along
And I’m quitting, quitting the blues, blues of the world
I’m singing a song, yes, singing a song
Sixty-five.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
Embrace the Absurd 