A Very Good Year

I turned sixty this week. Go me.

It was a good time. Both the boys were down and the four of us had dinner in a favourite place down the town where they know me and they know not to take me too seriously. I also had the opportunity to see both sides of the family, Patricia’s and mine, in the days before the birthday and, although both meetings were for sad reasons, there was a moment for people I care about to wish me well on my upcoming milestone birthday.

So, it was all good.

I got a nice array of pressies. New glasses, (check the photo) and new prescription Ray ban sunnies, which are proving life changing. I’ve needed glasses for the last twenty years but have never had prescription sunglasses so it’s always been a toss up between reducing the glare and not seeing terrible well or seeing really well and squinting into the sun. Now I’m ready for action. I feel dreadfully cool too. I got my first pair of Ray bans when I was twenty-five (I think) and I’ve always loved the look. Now here I am again, on a street near you. I also got some of those cool air bud things for your ears, which I’m enjoying a lot, and Sam always brings me into his world of music with a CD for my lovely player and it’s something I treasure a lot. This time, the CD is ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You’ by Big Thief, just in case you feel like listening along.

I got other things from other places too but you don’t need to hear it all and I don’t need to write it down. You get the picture. So far, it’s been a very good year.

The feeling I woke up with, on my birthday morning, was of having achieved something. I guess it may sound trite or insincere but this is honestly how I felt. I felt like I’d made it to sixty and, no matter what happened to me from this day forward, I’d had a great sixty years and nobody could ever take that away from me. I thought a little about two groups of people, those who don’t get as far as Sixty and those who don’t get there in the fullness of their health. Not in a gloating, ‘check me out, I win’ type of a way but more in a ‘if I’ve been randomly selected to stick around for another while then I’d better do the very best I can with it.

Since my birthday landed, I’ve had my first (and possibly only) Aperol Spritz and I’ve toddled off to see Indiana Jones in a matinee, just because I wanted to. I got my new glasses (see above) and I am working hard to finish a writing thing that I’ve been dawdling over for a long time.

The growing tendency, in the last decade, has been to keep my head down as far as humanly possible. To avoid trouble and danger and strife at all costs. To cruise and doze on into antiquity. It’s not who I used to be. It’s not who I reckon I should be.

Writing is my thing and always will be. But I’ve become passive about it. I still write but not with any expectation of it being seen or shared. Every time it happens it’s like some kind of a pleasant, unwarranted surprise. But, like it or not, I’m actually better than that. I can tell a story, I can bring you along with me, make you laugh, even make you cry. I’ve put in the hours and the hard yards. I should just be trying a little harder to get out there with what I do.

When it comes to resolutions, New Years Eve doesn’t work for me. I watch Jools Holland and greet the neighbours out on the street and go to bed. Perhaps sixtieth birthdays are where I should do my best resolving. I certainly feel more inclined to that. I think I should resolve to make it so that, when I look back at the ripe old age of Sixty One, I can say with some authority, “Hey, that was a very good year.”

As that man quoted at the end of that thing, “I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” Me? I’d probably best throw a couple of ‘try to’ qualifications in there.

That’s all we can ever do… is try.