Too Sexy to be Sixty....OH PLEEEZE!!

I guess there is no more denying it now. The official beginning of the "celebrations" has begun as Sunday my two step-daughters and their children came over to help me celebrate early and today the most gorgeous huge bouquet of flowers arrived from my step-son and daughter-in-law........

.....Celebrate what you ask???

Well I guess I must fess up....Tomorrow....Wednesday, the 12th of November is my birthday.....and this one is a real toughie...OyVay!

I was born in 1948....so you figure it out!!

I told the girls earlier that no other birthdays had bothered me until this one and I'm just plumb exasperated about it! There's just no way I can be 60! How did that happen? Why I feel like it couldn't have been more than a few years ago that I was giggling with my high school girlfriends as we all swooned over some 16 year old boy who looked like Elvis in our chemistry class. But then I guess reality sets in when you realize that your next High School reunion will be the 45th! Yikes!....and your step-son who was also born in an "8" year ('68) turned 40 this year!!!! Oh my gosh!!

I got the most beautiful flowers from my wonderful step-son and his sweet wife and the girls and grand kids gave me a beautiful snowman light, Willow Tree angel carving and a coffee cup that proudly says "Too Sexy to be Sixty". Ha! Ha! If only that were true....I'll be the first to admit gravity crept up behind me some time ago and attacked me when I wasn't looking.

I will wait until tomorrow to open John's presents which he's got all wrapped with riddle clues on them.........something we do for all our gifts, but I can never figure out his clues....it's like my mind goes blank, no matter how many times I read the clues. It isn't until I open the present that I then go.....ohhhhh ....now I get it!! I'm told the girls came upstairs on Sunday and read the riddles and guessed them right off, first guess......I guess my 60 year old mind is a little slow.

My sweet daddy always says you know you're old when no one living is twice your age....and more recently he says ....you know you're old when your "baby" daughter is turning 60.

60 is a real turning of the corner in my book. Not all sad though....just kind of brings you into another mindset. Finally, if you're lucky by sixty you have all (or most) of your finances figured out. By sixty, you're at least thinking about retirement and lately wishing the stock market would level out or go back up so you could take it (retirement) sooner than later. By sixty you've gone over or at least started that " Bucket List" (things I'd like to do before I kick the bucket). By sixty you realize that the younger generation thinks a lot different than you do or did at their age. At sixty, all of a sudden, music seems to get very loud and it almost feels like a warm blanket laid on your shoulders when you hear an old Sinatra song played on the radio....and you feel young and full of vinegar when the the Beach Boys or the Beetles come on. Because you have no idea who or what Coldplay does.....you felt sad when you heard Paul Newman passed away, but you've never heard of Golshifteh Farahani or why her body lies???

I vaguely know what an Ipod is and have no clue how they get all that music in that tiny flat case. At sixty I don't know how to text on my phone and for that matter worry too much that it would only cause more pain in the thumbs of these already arthritic hands! And at 60, you finally realize what your parents have meant for so many years when they say "I really don't want anything for Christmas"....just seeing you is present enough. "

But all those somewhat funny negatives aside, 60 is really not so bad. I was 54 when I lost my husband to emphysema and was diagnosed with breast cancer a week after (all in all a really sad hard time in my life). But now I'm going to be 60.....cancer free for 6 years and with old special memories tucked safely away....I've started a new life with a wonderful man who is a pure delight and means the world to me.

At 60 I find I really do care about who gets elected president and vice president and even though our choices both brought a series of questions and issues....I'm not ashamed to voice, that in my opinion, the right team won. And at 60 (although I think I've always known this) I truly understand that what's most important in this life is family and friends and health.....and not the money or the job title or the kind of car you drive.

One of my step-daughter's wrote in her card "60 is just a number"....and that's pretty much true.

Today I don't have much I regret...(except perhaps, as it's always been, that I never had a child of my own)....but my step-son, daughter-in-law and my two new step-daughters have taken me in as though they were my own.....and at 60 that's a great feeling. I do have a touch of arthritis in my fingers. I do color my hair so the gray doesn't show through. It takes me a little longer to do things and I still hate it when I walk all the way downstairs and can't remember what I wanted in the kitchen drawer.....and I laught when I walk up those stairs and look forward to the ranch condo we may someday own.

I read somewhere that, 'It's not the years in your life that matter, it's the life in your years'.
And if that's true, then life is just beginning!

Like the poet Jean Paul says. " Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end. "

I think I shall look at it like this "60" .....doesn't it kind of look like the word "GO" .... as in "go for the gold"...."keep on going".....go for the gusto....go...go...go! It's nice to be at an age where you can go for the things that really bring you pleasure, that have real meaning, that keep you excited about life, and yet be at the age where you truly do have time to stop now and then and smell the roses and ponder thoughts and laugh at the new gadgets that kids use and have never been without, but are a total mystery to you. And then being a "Baby Boomer"....I guess we can't forget the words of the Beatles song:

When I get older losing my hair,

Many years from now.

Will you still be sending me a valentine

Birthday greetings-- bottle of wine.

If I'd been out till quarter to three,

Would you lock the door;

Will you still need me,

Will you still feed me,

When I'm sixty-four.

Heck I'm just turning 60......Life is pretty wonderful these days....and 60 is just a number...........so maybe in some hysterical way...I am "Too Sexy to be Sixty"!!!