Six-O

I turned sixty this month. What a rush.

I was so excited for my birthday celebration, I could hardly sleep the night before. Then I could hardly sleep the night of. Finally, the night after, I crashed like a baby and still woke exhausted.

I don’t think I’ve got enough energy to be sixty. I might have to repeat fifty-nine and take another run at sixty again next year.

I’m one of the last of my friends to reach this milestone, and believe me, they’re some stiff competition. They’re all still beautiful, some of them are athletic (I kind of hate them for that), still kicking butt and taking names, showing the world that sixty is the new forty. They’re such good role models I wasn't afraid to join the Sixty Club at all.

So, I embraced sixty by getting my first (and last) tattoo and living to tell about it. Pretty sure I’m the first in our Club to do that. I might have taken things a little too far. Once again, I think I’ve proven I’m not mature enough to be sixty and might need to be held back another year.

I’m always reading on Facebook how getting old isn’t for sissies. That your body really starts coming unglued in this decade and if you don’t stop eating sugar and swallowing carbs, your inflamed brain will self-combust and leak out your ear right in front of God and everybody. But I haven’t seen any brain goop so far and I’m already two weeks into this.

I think it’s just an ugly rumor that growing older is horrible. “Beats the heck out of the other alternative,” one of my birthday cards read. True. If you woke up alive today, you’re doing better than all those people in the cemetery. Just stop and think about that for a minute. You’re welcome.

I was still in my thirties the first time somebody warned me about aging. “The day you turn forty,” they said, “your body is going to start falling apart.” I’m not sure why I wasn’t terrified by that birthday, but I think I had the same stubborn reaction as when I overheard a nurse tell my husband during the long labor of my first child, “She’s too tired to go through with this, and is definitely going to need a caesarian.” 

“The heck I will,” I thought to myself, and pushed that kid out like he was a tube of toothpaste.

I’ve faced naysayers before. Watch them raise a white flag above my fortieth birthday cake? “The heck they will,” I thought in defense of my middle-aged body, and kept on breathing and walking and living and loving just like I’d done the day before, when I was thirty-nine.

I’ll admit I don’t have the body I had when I was twenty. Well, I do—with the exception of a few missing parts—but my chassis has changed from being a new model to a classic. There are plenty of dents and scratches after all the miles I’ve put on it, but it’s served me well and I’m not ready to trade it in yet. I just keep taking it back to the mechanics for repairs and tune-ups, and head down the road for another hundred thousand miles.

I’m not sure how this crossed over into an automobile blog, but since we just put a new engine and a new transmission and new brakes and new tires on my favorite SUV because I still love to drive that thing, it seemed to fit. After all, she’s taken us on two hundred thirty-four thousand wonderful miles and still has a lot of life left in her. At this rate, I think someday Rob’s going to wind up burying me and my Tahoe together.

So, here’s to sixty! “How do you feel?” a close friend asked me after I blew out all those candles. “Liberated!” I told her. And then I went home to take a nap.

Hey, if I’m gonna make it another ten years, I’ve got to pace myself.