Another Birthday...

             “Are you going to change the name of your blog?” Hayden said to me on the phone last week when I turned 70.  “Of course,” I assured him.  And so I am transitioning to “Views from My World”.  Forget about the decades!  Whose keeping track anyway? In a birthday card from my German friend Heidja she simply wrote, “Age is irrelevant!” Another of my birthday cards says “The Older I get the Older Old Is…”Another card says “Young at Heart at 70…”  I like them all.

            My birthday began with a phone call at 7:30 a.m. from Jenny in London who always calls on special occasions.  In her very English sing-song lilt I heard,  “Hello, Kris, Happy Birthday.” At 8 a.m. I was off to my first Core Fitness class. Why not begin this decade with a new kind of exercise regimen?  The day ended with a surprise elegant dinner planned by Art at the Inn on the Biltmore Estate with friends Ayla and Bruce.  Throughout the day in between came all the birthday cards, emails, flowers, gift packages, and phone calls. I was regaled with attention.

            For a birthday I had dreaded all year, it turned out to be one of the best because everyone I care about remembered me in some way. What I missed was Mother’s “Happy Birthday” and the recounting of the story of my birth. “It was VJ Day (Victory over Japan) in the Santiago, Chile maternity clinic where you were born,” she would start, “and all the nurses and doctors told me I must name you Victoria for Victory because the War was over.”  “But,” she went on, “I knew you would become a Vicky and I didn’t like that nickname…so we named you Kristina Ingrid instead.”  And then she would relate that day putting in all the details like the storyteller that she was.  She did that each year for my brothers and me and we took it for granted. This was my first birthday without her and it was hard.  I wanted to hear the story again.

            Instead I found one of Mother’s letters to me on my birthday a few years ago when she could barely type on the computer any longer.  She had birthday stories to share as always…

I remember you as a plump little baby crawling on the floor in our house in Santiago, Chile.  And then in the straw hat your Daddy brought you from a trip to when we lived in Lima.  Your 5^th birthday was in Washington D.C. in a house we rented a few months before getting on a ship for three weeks to travel to our new life in Buenos Aires.  By then your little brother Rich, was toddling.  Then the birthdays in that big city (Buenos Aires) were special.  One birthday we took your little girlfriends to an elegant tea shop, another to see a play for children.  Your 15th, or was it your 16^th birthday you had a very grown up dinner or was it a luncheon in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  How I loved you through all the years.  And here is another birthday, and I want you to know you have added so much to all my years.  Mother 

          

            Now that I’m over the threshold I am letting go of what it means to “be in your 70’s”.  For months I had been checking in with myself, kind of like feeling around in your mouth for a cavity or loose tooth and then having the sense of relief when you find out you are fine.  How am I, and do I feel any different?  A few sore muscles occasionally from hiking or biking but nothing to dwell on that won’t go away. Am I slowing down? Less productive?  No, but maybe the freedom I have at 70 allows me spend time on things that are meaningful. Do I look back to the past more than I used to?  Not really, unless prompted by a particular place like our recent return to Vermont.  Everywhere we went brought back past experiences, memories of people who are gone, and calculation of years gone by.  Was it really 45 years ago that I worked at Proctor High School?  Has it truly been 16 years since we were at Hayden’s UVM graduation?  Has it really been four years since we moved to Asheville? Where have the years gone?

             I have often been drawn to essays, memoirs, and poems written about growing older -how it feels, what it means, how to accept it as if there is a “how to” way of doing it. Entering my 70’s, I know that getting older is personal and everyone does it differently.  Mother was my role model of how to do it gracefully. I think of how she lived her last years and so much of her “way” has influenced me deeply especially now that she is gone..  She passionately disliked people who spoke only of health problems and focused on aches and pains.  She developed a strong positive outlook on life and her phrase to wipe away the unimportant stuff  became “No importa” and “No hay problema”.  ( It doesn’t matter…and there’s no problem.)  This came out of all the years she was the diplomat’s wife directing a house full of servants where she dealt with many “problemas”.  She always told family stories wanting to impart that history to us and the the grandchildren would know who they were and where they came from. Her grandchildren were more important than anything but she didn’t brag or talk of them to strangers.  She was very private. She was an intellectual and in her later years read and reread the classics while she could and took an interest in what was going on in the world every day. She did not dwell on “where have the years gone” but lived in the moment, never adding up the years that might be left.

            Now that I’m in my 70’s I’m inspired to live more meaningfully each day.  I love the freedom to pick and chose how to spend my days and not fill time to stay busy.  I have my Mother to thank for that.  Most of all, my recent birthday reminded me how blessed I am to have  friends I’ve known for decades who care about me, as well as nieces and nephews, cousins and brothers, a son, daughter in law and grandson whom I love dearly.

          I hear people say, “the seventies are the new sixties” which is just a different way of saying “it’s all irrelevant”, as my friend did.   It’s possible the 70’s could be my best decade ever.  Who’s to know?  But perhaps I can make it so.