Sunday, June 21, 2020

Where Were You In '62?

I did the math. I will be one hundred years old in 2062. Okay, so it wasn't a really difficult equation and required no regrouping or scratch paper. But as an added bonus I should like to point out that this birthday will occur forty-two years from now. I know. That wasn't terrifically challenging either, but the gift of this nice round number 2020 allows a good deal of easy reflection.
I bring this up because it was on my forty-fifth birthday that I moaned to my wife, who was asking me a polite "how you doin'?" with "I'm halfway to ninety."
That was thirteen years ago. At that time, I had a ten year old son. Not even out of elementary school. Now I am the proud owner of one college graduate. Road tested and time honored. My own father died when he was sixty-one. I plan on hanging around substantially longer than that, since I want to live at least thirty-nine years longer than my old man.
See what I did there? It's like a puzzle, and all the pieces add up. Like I was thirty-three years old when dad passed. At the time, I really couldn't imagine what the next twenty-five years might hold. Like the way that I found my way into a career in teaching. It was dad's life insurance that put a big bump in our finances allowing us to buy the house into which my son was born. Twenty-three years ago. It pains me to think about all the things I might have shared with my father, not the least of which is his namesake, his grandson. He would have been eighty-six, taking in all the hoopla, and probably getting all misty at the thought of how time flies.
It doesn't really. Fly, that is. It's just that we go for long periods of time without noticing the steady churning of the days and weeks until years pass by. Which is precisely why I have decided to go ahead and just plan on sticking around until I see a century. George Burns famously made a date with his agent to have him scheduled to play Caesar's Palace on his hundredth birthday. "I can't die," he would insist, "I'm booked."
I want to be around to see my son's wedding. To see his children go about their paces. I want to attend their commencements and promotions. I want to see how things turn out. I do not think this is too much to ask. For now it's another year in the can, and I'm headed in the right direction. In two more years, I'll be sixty. But I guess you might have already put that one together.

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