Sixty Something

At close to the last minute, I decided I did not want to be home for my birthday. I booked a cottage at the Cape Cod-esque beach town on the Washington Coast, filled my ice chest with miscellaneous odds and ends (frozen pizza, soup, salad dressing, who knows?), and headed west. The weather was not good, the sky had been menacing and dark, and on one stretch of road it rained so hard I had to drop well below the speed limit because I could not see. But this morning I am at the ocean, my trusted friend Harley snoozing at my side and as of this morning, I am 61 years old.

I have never felt very grown up, not in the way I imagined being grown up would be. Because I never had — or wanted, let’s be clear — kids, I haven’t observed the passing of time outside myself in the way I think parents must do. I mean, you literally create a helpless being and then they’re, I don’t know, driving and writing English papers and paying rent? That’s time right there, in a way I will never know. I have home owner’s insurance and preseciption medication, but I don’t have wine glasses. I do have two divorces. The first feels like a distant memory but the second, well… it’s what I imagine a college sports injury is like. Most of the time you’re fine, but every now and then you try to do something and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s from that time I got tackled in field hockey. Never did heal quite right. Acts up when the weather is bad.”

I appear to be in excellent physical health given the cards I was dealt, some structural nonsense compounded by gravity, an immune system that crashes from time to time. After dodging it for four years, I got Covid in November, but it was 5th gen Covid so not only had I been vaxxed repeatedly, there was an easily obtainable treatment. I’ve barely had a cold in the past few years. I walk a dog every day, swim laps a few days a week, and ride my bike everywhere I can when the weather isn’t foul. Last time I saw my doc, she practially cheered my health. If I have wrinkles and creaks and padding, it’s all age appropriate and no cause for concern. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc.

My head seems screwed on well enough, too. I suffer from seasonal depression, a lethargy and malaise that drags me down from November through February; it’s why I left Seattle the last two winters. This year I am in the Pacific Northwest for what we call The Big Dark and it’s been rough at times, but I know what it is and I know it’s temporary. The black dog circling my house in the past, that ghost seems mostly gone.

Before I headed to the coast, I made myself a birthday cake and when I got here, I made the cream and bittersweet chocolate frosting. It’s in the fridge now, setting up. This afternoon I will eat a slice with coffee. If the weather is not too terrible, I will take Harley the Dog for a long walk on the beach. It should be a good day, even if the weather is bad — I will eat cake and Harley and I will smell the ocean and I will think it is good that for my birthday I got to eat cake and smell the ocean.

My father died at 79, my mother at 83. The longevity calculators I have played with say that I could make 89 years old, maybe more. I am keenly aware that I am on the downslope of my existence though there is plenty of time to get in a third act, possibly a fouth, even.

The modern sculptor, Louise Nevelson, didn’t get much recognition until she was 60, Morgan Freeman was in his 50s when things really took off for him. I’m not saying I’ll achieve that kind of success, only that there’s a model for it. And I’ve had a good decade for creative work, I tell you what. That’s pretty fun to think about. That CD release party, a barn burner night, was right after my 50th, my film screened in Manhattan right after my 60th, and inbetween I published a memoir. I love the project I’m working on now, a podcast about getting fired. You’d think working on something based in such a bad situation would be bleak, but it’s a source of endless delight.

So it’s not like my view of the downslope is a precipitous drop into a hospital bed, though my financial planner did have me get a long term care plan just in case. I have shifted a bit on these annual state of the union addresses — writing obituaries and turning sixty will do that to a person. I’m not saying it’s over, not by a long shot, I’m rather, acknowledging that there is an end. We’re all headed for Samarra. I hope to take the backroads, the scenic route, and to arrive when that cafe table right on the square opens up.