A SPECIAL DAY

Howdy friends and cyber-neighbors. It’s a special day today so I thought I’d celebrate by spouting off a little bit. What’s the special day, you ask. Well it’s the first day of the last year I can claim to be in my sixties.Yep, another decade is fast closing out.

When we arrive at one of these milestone years we have a tendency to notice how things have changed. We notice how technology caught up to us and zipped right past at an alarming rate. We notice how young folks are so different from us. And we notice how they’re so different from how we were when we were young. Or so we think. We also assess our physical situation. We might stand naked in front of a full length mirror and look at how kind aging has been to us. Then we laugh like hell. If we run into someone in our own age bracket we might suddenly start comparing our ailments and infirmities. Seems to be something we just can’t control.

Some of us might think about the state of entertainment, politics, business. But that gets depressing in a big fat hurry. So we turn off the TV, find a favorite bluegrass album (Gibson Brothers in my case), grab a good book and settle our blood pressure down.

Then in a quiet moment (there are lots of quiet moments when you’re fast approaching seventy) we might recall the good times and the wonderful things we’ve seen and experienced in our lives. Of course we can’t fully do that exercise in recollection. Hell, we can’t even remember where we put the car keys let alone that little kiss Jane or Trudy or Linda gave us behind the bleachers in ninth grade. So, if we’re inclined to write about this stuff in poetry or memoir, we make up some memories. Who’ll check? Anyone who was around back then is either dead or has as forgotten most of what they knew.

Another reverie on one of these special days may send us to thoughts of the future. We’ll think about how we still have things we want to do, places we want to visit and other milestones we want to watch in the lives of our children and grandchildren. Good luck with that, right? But we go ahead and make our plans knowing that we have very little control over what’s to come. And then when we’re about halfway through making our “to do” list we decide that something is missing. Yep, we dropped the pen on the floor and we don’t really feel like bending over to pick it up. So we decide it’s time to take a nap. And we do.

Have an exceptionally fine day. I know I will.