Seventy

I celebrated my 70th birthday last month. Seventy. Seven-zero. Who thinks about turning seventy, at least much before they are 69?

When she called on my birthday, my friend Becky asked if I was saying the number out loud. (She celebrates her 70th birthday this week.) Hmmmm. It did kind of stick in my throat temporarily. Like a new year or a new address, seventy takes getting used to.

I am trying to wrap my head around this number. Honestly, I find 70 to be something of a surprise. How did we get here, I asked Becky? I don’t feel much different from my 50’s. I suppose it’s another riff on “where did the years go?” (The week before my birthday, Steve and I celebrated our 45th anniversary and the week after our son celebrated his 40th birthday — talk about being gobsmacked by ridiculous numbers!)

In my family, we own our age. We celebrate with parties and cakes. Although since my birthday comes on the heels of the holidays and in the midst of what my mother used to refer to as the “January festival,” I am increasingly inclined to let it slip by. Not because I dislike birthdays (the other option is not at all appealing), but really because the month is just. too. crowded.

This year, however, the question of celebrating or not celebrating isn’t the issue, it’s the number. It’s potentially intimidating!

But, it turns out, seventy is sort of trendy.

“Inside the List” in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, makes the same point. Nancy Pelosi was just re-elected as Speaker of the House of Representative. She’s 78. In January Glenn Close won a Golden Globe for Best Actress. She’s 71. Jessica Benett’s essay in the January 8 Times, “I Am (an Older) Woman. Hear me Roar” ticks off the names of a number of women and even more statistics that support “our” growing power.

As Mary Pipher points out in “The Joy of Being a Woman in Her 70’s“, “There is a sweetness to 50-year-old friendships and marriages that can’t be described in language. We know each other’s vulnerabilities, flaws and gifts.” That was the lesson of my 50th high school reunion, where one friend pointed out that it’s oddly comforting to be with these people who had shared so much of our daily lives, often from kindergarten or first grade all the way through high school graduation. We weren’t all best friends, or even friends for that matter, but we were classmates. In it together.

Pipher believes that some of the strength and resilience of our older selves is credited to “a shelterbelt of good friends and long-term partners.” I second that.

There are losses, some expected and some not. When I mentioned to my family doctor that I had suddenly and unexpectedly lost a dear friend, he gently pointed out that I was getting to an age when that would happen. When my friend Barb’s mom passed away a few months ago, I realized she was the last of “that generation” in my life. My parents and in-laws, along with the aunts and uncles and family friends that made up that generation that provided the buffer between us and mortality, have been slipping from lives for some years now. It is what it is.

But life goes on. I have been blessed with grown up children who are fun and interesting, a pair of grandsons to keep me on my toes, and a wide circle of interesting friends. Steve and I are planning some new travels once his chemo is in the rear view mirror. I have always been a glass-half-full kind of person.

Perhaps as Steve says, 70 is the new 50!

Thanks for stopping by. See you next time!