Sixty

Yesterday was my 60th birthday. I was born in 1950 and I remember growing up thinking that at the turn of the century I would be fifty. As a kid, that seemed like light years away and and older than I could even fathom. When I was 15 and my father celebrated his fortieth birthday, there was a big sign in front of our house that said "Stan is over the hill." It sure seemed so to me. At that time forty seemed officially irrevocably old. When I turned thirty five and was pregnant with my daughter I felt like I was no longer a young person with all of my options open. My footloose and fancy free days were over before I ever paid attention to really enjoying them. I was worried by the time I emerged from my active parenting years, I would be too old to frolic and enjoy my freedom again. Raising my daughter was a very satisfying, stimulating and challenging time in my life. Being Monnya's Mom has always been a heart-opening and mind-opening experience that stretches my limits beyond who I think myself to be. Parenting Monnya and being loved so deeply brought up everything that wasn't love in me to be burned away. I began in earnest to work with my ego because I had to to show up as the kind of Mom I wanted to be. Suddenly I was fifty and Monnya was fifteen. I wonder if she saw things like I did at fifteen and to her fifty seemed ancient? Fifty was a powerful birthday. I finally was really releasing caring about what other people thought of me and daring to be myself. Even if I still wondered whether I was too much for most people I had found a supportive group of friends who accepted me as I was. I still longed for the partner of my dreams and thought myself incomplete without him.
This decade has been about becoming the person I wanted for a partner and letting myself be the partner of my dreams. Letting go of finding the partner of my dreams has allowed me to open to finding a flawed, wondrous, human being who loves and accepts me as a flawed wondrous human being. I am grateful.
Throughout my fifties, sixty felt old to me. I dreaded turning sixty because in my mind it meant old old old. It meant one foot in a rest home and a decaying body. Many of my friends are already in their sixties. They don't seem decrepid. Yet health issues and slowed down energy seem to be a part of what they've come to terms with. Today I paid someone to shovel my sidewalk and driveway. The snow was heavy and I knew I wasn't up for it. However, I did that so I could get my car out to go teach yoga. Maybe being sixty isn't about being old it is about being more discerning of my limitations so I can have the energy to do what I want to do. Monnya says that sixty is the new forty. She has always been my best cheerleader. I rather think that sixty will be what I make it to be. I am willing to let go of my pictures of what I though sixty would be and embrace what is. Maybe that will be one of the bennies of my sixties. I finally see that holding on to my pictures of what I thought anything would be takes way more energy than I have. It is easier to get curious about how things are and embrace that. What is a picture that you are ready to let go of? How about putting it in your dead picture book? If you did what would that leave you space to open to?