Wholly whole Lee

[sooZen]

Well, it's true and anyone that knows me well can tell you that I have a phobia concerning numbers. It isn't as bad anymore, unlike preschool when I would hide in the cloak closet until numbers where past and coloring began or had to take general math in high school because I was afraid of algebra. No, I actually pay the bills and balance the checkbook now and don't shiver at the thought.

This year may be different though. I am thinking about numbers a lot, in fact, more than usual and that doesn't make me comfortable. Whole numbers, numbers measured in decades, those tens that were easy to multiply unlike the nines or the eights or those tricky sevens and sixes that are just past the easier fives you can count on one hand. Getting past the tens was always a fright...do you use your toes?

But back to the tens...those decade numbers...I can now count my years since birth in terms of decades and that caused me to think. "Self", I said, "you are going to be sixty this year." "SIXTY!" my self exclaimed, slightly out of breath (you may get out of breath at this age easier than in the past.) It seems such a big number, unlike fifty which seemed 'mature' and knowing or forty which seemed ripe finally and sexy, cuz I did feel sexy. No, sixty is a whole nuther number and a bit daunting.

Let's see, sixty is more than half a life, less than really old in dog years and frankly a funny looking number my self thinks. And it certainly is looming large. I have friends that are past it, some that barely batted an eye as it came and went. So my self wonders, what is the big deal? It does seem like some big deal in some momentous way, it is six decades since my first turn on the planet.

And so, I started thinking about decades, personal self decades. Can I remember ten? (Notice that I don't use real numbers here, only words...numbers can be scary.) Ten, let's see, yes, I remember some things because I know they happened around that time. But as for that birthday, not really.

Twenty was a biggie too. Self remembers twenty for I was out on my own, disengaged from the 'parent's' and footloose and foolish. I remember thinking when I turned twenty, "I can't hardly wait until twenty-one and legalization." My friends were either in college or in a far off war that we all felt was stupid. A few came home in boxes, gift wrapped in flags and a few came home less intact and all came home wounded in some way. My girlfriends were scattering like seeds in the winds of fate, some to marry and some to find nirvana. Music and drugs and goodly boys were on my mind.

Thirty was tough. I was over the hump and the wheels started to come off. I had two children, I had married at twenty-four to the love of my life. He was the best friend of my first husband (another story) and life was really hard, lessons came fast and furious and my fate seemed fated. Sick child, retarded child, gifted child...my world was four feet or shorter.

Forty, ahhh yes, forty. That number almost makes me like a number for forty was purely bliss. I was hot like a Texas chile pepper and loving every minute. I was healed! I was in love with me and all around me. I did notice that the eyesight was starting to blurr but I was too busy saving the world.

The BIG five ohh. Fifty didn't loom as large as I though it might. My younger brother (by three years) thought it would be funny to send me black stuff for my birthday. You know, the over-the-hill stuff you see in Hallmark stores. I laughed and saved them and sent them back three years later. I didn't mind fifty at all. I was finally old enough to be eccentric and not just weird or crazy.

And now, ta-dah...sixty cometh. Oh my! Lordy! (my grannie always used that word to express the big stuff.) It seems like an awful lot of decades right now. What happened? Where did the time go? Really, I'm gonna be how old? My self is in a dither and to top it off it is starting to feel a lot like thirty only much bigger, twice as much , twice as heavy, two times more than thirty.

My friends are falling away, my body is falling down, my teeth are falling out. "Help! I'm falling and I can't get up!" my self panics. I will reap the benefits of senior meals at the Golden Corral, AARP life insurance ads clog my mailbox. There are funny looking wild hairs in my eyebrowns and I feel stray whiskers on my chinny-chin-chin. Tight jeans don't feel so hot and I am still hot but it is not sexy.

This decade is gonna take some adjustments and I don't just mean in my waistband. For one, me and my self are going to start celebrating right now. Heck, the time, the hour, the day is not until September but I am starting my celebrating now for I need that long to deal with the idea. I can look past the numbers and see what I have become and damn, I am a pretty fine woman. Creative, still loved by that man I married in my twenties, my sick retarded child is now thirty, my gifted child is a home owner with a neat wife and a slick job and I do what I like when I want to.

Maybe sixty won't be so bad after all. Happy Birthday self!

[Lightning Rod]

sooz, this is crackerjack writing

as one who see the big six-o looming, it really touches me. Maybe when we are sixty, we will master our craft? Or it might take us till we are seventy. Beyond? We can only hope.

[Doreen Peri]

really fine writing.... good to see you SooZ! we've missed you around here!

I read it 2x... nice exploration ...

It *does* get easier as it gets tougher, huh? or something

I love my stretchy pants. (gonna be a bag lady soon... no shit... i'll email ya to talk about it )

I haven't done the decade examination thing yet. I might try this exercise, myself.

[westcoast]

absolutely wonderful! thank you for this exploration finely writ.

~westcoast

[sooZen]

low bow...thank you so very much. i was quite happy with the flow myself and i am finding i am not an easy person to please.

nice to be a round, nice to see me see you all, old and new friends.

(Dor...I am working on the bag thing...stay tuned and i look forward to pleasing you. )

[judih]

oh, but sixty is the new forty. That's what the media is saying.
So if sixty is forty, that means that we can all breathe easier.

(if i could just catch my breath).
great to read your life, Soo. Far more detailed than i could do.
i don't remember a single birthday - maybe cause i stopped celebrating when my parents stopped insisting on bringing round the neighbour kids and those weird cake thingies with candles. i guess that was probably around ten.

After that? all a big mess of days - some filled with laughter, some filled with tears.

a little less ego now than before, but still pokes its pesky head into my quest for zenhood.

looking forward to ploughing the earth a little (a lot) longer. love it when you let yourself hang out on a written page, beautiful bag lady

[sooZen]

ju, i want the world to know how much I truly LOVE YOU! you are my bestest friend i never knew. hah!

this writing thing is fleeting, it comes and goes much like the seasons as does my wanting to engage it because i do have so much passion for other things and i am so happy when it strikes and don't miss it a bit when some other love tugs me away and some may say i am fickle, i have so many loves but priorities are important to me, i make lists, i cross off the accomplishments, i take myself too seriously until some fool makes me laugh at my foolish self...(pause)...but i never will lose the love of the written word, the art of the conversation, the argument or just acting silly like suessey, ya know?

[judih]

and, i think that's the thing.
the silliness - preserving the channel to silliness is what keeps us flexible like a sweet lotus stem.
i woke myself up this morning laughing. i dreamt i was setting up an outdoor meal with a friend and the wind was blowing mercilessly. everything had to be held down by something else. god forbid someone would want to take a fork weighing down the paper cups or a napkin from the container holding down the plates.
the jokes were endless and the laughter sublime.
isn't life like that?

[sooZen]

oh ju, i wish i could say that life was always silly but then some black hole sucks me in, briefly, i read about the loss of honeybees or polar bears or someone cuts down 700 year old trees that were my childhood friends and i sink. old friends act like asses or just something. i know you can relate, you always do.

i do try to ride the crest of the waves but not always success fully. i am wise enough to know i am foolish, i am foolish enough to think i am wise. i was raised by clowns, i birthed comedians, i married a big goof so i can't stay under long.

i read very recently that just before you go to bed you should smile that the act of smiling is one of the healthiest things you can do, the use of those muscles stimulate the endorphins and your innards. it must be, i think. the libra in me must make me look at the back of the coin, maybe?

your picnic dream sounds just like any picnic in phar lepht...the wind almost always BLOWS.

[Arcadia]

I am curious towards numbers maybe because I never understood them!!!!!!!! I´m also about to change decades this year (third for fourth!). Nice to read this, it helps me to talk about how I feel with it!. Let´s see:

1- Without kids of my own, without living with a special-other (beyond myself) and without pretending I´m living with it I feel somehow more younger and at the same time more older than most of the people of my age. mmm... is it a problem? maybe, sometimes I wish not to be so different from the rest.

2- For us women, to reach 40 is somehow a kind of "retirement" (you have no more chance to say "maybe", "later" to maternity at least in a phisical-phisical way). If in your fantasies or possibilities is about to start that path is it somehow a problem. If not, maybe a relief or you simply are busy with other things. For me is it now a mix of disorientation-some tension and a bit sadness. But... doing revisionism & somehow a balance (well, at this point I sound completely like an accountant!): I didn´t have desire to be a mother in my twenties and I had desire of it at some point of my thirties but the basic conditions I wanted for that weren´t present. So, was I selfish? mmm... I don´t feel so. Can these things be evaluated this way or some other?. I don´t know!

3- I was love, in love and crossed by love in so different forms and so many times. I´m aware and thankfull for that!. I always felt inside me and surround me a strong loving energy all my life -even & sometimes stronger in hard moments- I never doubted about it!. No idea if it was, it is, it will be personal as a special-special meaningful other. What I´m sure is that nostalgy isn´t its purpose!!!

4- (contradictory) I´m more confortable with myself than I was twenty years ago

yes, I´m open to celebrate in June!!!!!!!