Countdown to 60 ...

60 days from now, I’ll be 60. No, I’m not asking for cards or flowers or accolades. Just a little patience and understanding, as I muse aloud about where I am and where I’m going, about how it feels  to turn (gulp) 60.  

I’m sure I don’t look a day over 59. I can still jog a fairly respectable pace, though not as fast as the young thing on the treadmill next to me the other day.  I still have most of my original parts, and I’m hoping to follow my 88-year-old father into a happy and healthy old age.  My husband and I have no intention of retiring any time soon. The idea of pulling onto the shoulder from the fast lane (okay, the middle or maybe even the slow lane) makes us both hyperventilate.  What would we do all day?

I’m not sure if I can still be considered an empty-nester.  My only child has already graduated college and is working and living on his own.  He’s off the payroll, as my husband puts it.  I’d like to think that I’ve gotten over the trauma of his leaving home, and really for the most part, I have.  It’s just that each time he comes home, I have to steel myself up to say goodbye again.  It makes me realize that leaving home isn’t something you do once, but again and again.  But still there’s no getting around the fact that our nest is empty, except for the dog and all our stuff.

I’m definitely an aging baby boomer. It dawns on me that younger people must get a kick out of that term since they never saw us as babies. In fact, there aren’t a whole lot of people who remember us in diapers or even grade school. No one questions us when we ask for the senior discount at the movies. Like the kids taking our tickets can really tell the difference between 55 and 75.   My husband’s parents have both passed on.  My mother died when I was a teenager, but thank god, my father is 88 and going strong.  In fact, I just came back from visiting him and the wonderful woman he’s been married to for 39 years. I get such a kick out of hearing them tell their friends “our kids are here” i.e., my husband and me.

I’m a teacher, one of the oldest teachers at the private school where I work. Actually, there are many teachers who are 10 or 20 years younger than me, but have been teaching much longer. For me, it’s a third career. I started off as a journalist then moved into PR.  I’m also a playwright, who likes to write about people my own age. Typically, we’re the parents in someone else’s coming-of-age story – the nagging mothers, the overbearing fathers, the doddering grandparents. And yet, I think our stories are less cliché ridden and much more interesting. Take Hamlet, for instance. We’ve all heard about his problem … to be or not to be, yadda yadda yadda. But what about his mother, a widow, who remarried before the body was cold?  Now that’s a story!