The Midnight Click

Well, with the midnight click less than one month away, I've decided might as well get on with it (collective sight of relief is OK, everyone). The midnight click is what I call the day I reach the dread sixty-five. Those of you patient enough to put up with my angst over this will recall that one minute before midnight I am (supposedly) competent--or as much as I have ever been--and one minute after I am on the slippery slope to final ash.

I've been thrashing about because I didn't feel any less competent as I approached the witching hour. I felt that this great threshhold was being forced on me by other people's perceptions. To that extent, it's still true. But now I've accepted that what's more important is what I think about myself. I've never felt more in control of my writing and my decisions and my life as I do now, even though I concede that may be relative. Someone told me once that people can't fall off the floor. Don't know about that. I think I may have started in the basement. But still, I don't have to buy into media perceptions of older people and I am now in a position to correct them rather than just resenting them. Laughter, I have decided, is the best remedy.

I have a t-shirt that says "In order to be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid." Young people look blank when they read it; the older folk just laugh. We've all been there. I imagine the Generation X are going to relate once their extreme sport injuries turn arthritic. Ah youth. I've certainly been my share of young and stupid, but I don't really feel I can claim to be old and wise. Old, maybe. But wise? Hell no--I still make mistakes worthy of me in my thirties. I still say awkward things at inappropriate moments. I still jump to conclusions and make assumptions. I still have an optimistic squint that says I have forever ahead of me. I am still surprised when I am asked if I want a senior discount. I want to look around at the someone they must be talking to behind me. It can't be me. I dye my hair and hide the wattle on my neck--I can't look a day over 50.

But in honor of this birthday, I am going to cut myself some slack. All those clothes in my closet that I have been saying I will diet and get into again?--we all have them--they are now heading out of the door. At 65, I am no longer prepared to starve myself back into a size 10. All the mindless extra housecleaning that someone told me was my job? I no longer need to polish the silver--it can tarnish. We don't entertain as we did in our forties so I can send on the serving pieces to the younger members of the family who have appearances and expectations to maintain. All my friendships date back forty years and more (remember Varney Circle, Kimi?) and my friends will overlook the dust. I am not going to avoid things because someone thinks they are inappropriate for my age: I will wear shorts, I will eat candy floss, I will slide down a water tunnel, I will bash my grandson's bumper car, I will go to Disneyland. And even more important to me, I will no longer be defensive about being into New Age stuff--one of these blogs I'll write about the childhood experience with the supernatural that led me to write Every Purpose Under Heaven. I am going to allow myself to be.

I don't think I will wear a t-shirt that says "old and still stupid sometimes," but that's how I feel. I am still learning, still growing, and still making mistakes. Now--about all those assumptions about people in the seventies.