Project Life: The Seventh Decade

So far, this sixty thing that looms large and fills me with trepidation, is a blank slate. The big day is two months away—May 6th, to be precise—but I’ve been thinking about this big old landmark birthday for a while. It’s not that I mind turning 60 (well, I do a little bit), but it’s what everyone else expects of 60 that bothers me.

I thought I might handle the whole affair by throwing myself a second 50th birthday party. That would give me another decade to get used to the idea. I figured that anyone who attended my original 50th birthday party, might raise an eyebrow or two, but be too polite to bring the subject up. And wouldn’t it be fun if a few of them thought that they were going crazy?

I discussed the plan with my oldest daughter, figuring she’d go for it in a big way. After all, if I’m shaving off ten years, didn’t that give her license to do the same? She reminded me that the local press was at my first 50th to document the event, complete with pictures. I dismissed that argument. Who remembers a newspaper article from a decade ago?

“Why don’t you take off twelve years like you usually do?” she asked. “You know, just go with the age of your boobs.”

I explained that this wasn’t about being cute, but that I was having real trouble knowing how to best spend the next ten years. ‘I know how to do my fifties,” I stressed. “I could easily do them again.”

“But the world needs a road map for what sixty looks like,” she said. “I’d like a road map.”

And so here I am, the Queen of Denial, about to show the world what sixty looks like.