Another birthday? I thought I had made it clear I
wouldn’t be acknowledging any more birthdays. Forty was fine, fifty was nifty,
sixty was sexy, but with only one more year until I join the septuagenarian
set, I’m ready to stop the clock.
How did I get here? Just yesterday I was graduating
from college, eagerly anticipating a career, plus marriage and a family. It was
an exciting time with most of life still ahead. Then, suddenly, I was retired
with grown children and grandchildren. What happened? Maybe our new condo is in
fact, a time-travel machine or perhaps an alien abduction has compressed the
years known as middle-age. Senior citizen? Medicare? Golden years? “Bah,
humbug!”
Last summer I attended my fiftieth high school reunion
only to be greeted by a bunch of old people. How could these gray-haired,
slightly chubby, unrecognizable strangers be my classmates from high school? Then
I passed a mirrored wall and realized I fit right in. How was it possible?
Maybe this awareness of approaching old age is what
keeps me writing. It seems like I have so many stories to tell and so little
time to tell them. I’ve sent my latest novel, I Want to Go Home, to my publisher, and now I’m working on a memoir
of my childhood growing up on a dairy farm. I have a desire to preserve these
memories for my children and grandchildren. I have a need to process them for
myself.
I always intended to age gracefully, whatever that
means. That was before old age hit me over the head with an iron skillet and
brought with it all its little aches and twinges. That was when I could diet
for a week prior to any impending event and lose ten pounds. That was before I
looked in the mirror and saw my mother staring back at me. That was before the
AARP magazine started arriving in the mail. Who ordered that, anyway?
Ann Landers, the famous advice columnist, once wrote,
“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us; at 40, we don’t care what
they think of us; at 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.”
So, maybe the seventies will be my decade of freedom.
Yes, freedom from doing what others expect of me, freedom to accomplish the
goals I didn’t have time to accomplish when I was busy with a career and family,
freedom to live my life boldly, to feel and act authentically without worrying
what other people think. Oh, that’s right. They’re not thinking of me at all.
Cindy L. Freeman is the author of two award-winning
short stories, a novella, Diary in the Attic and two novels, Unrevealed and The
Dark Room. Coming soon: I Want to Go
Home. Website: www.cindylfreeman.com; Facebook page: Cindy Loomis Freeman.
Her books are available through amazon.com or hightidepublications.com
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