Maybe Not Just Another Day

Maybe Not Just Another Day

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

Some might say that Wednesday was a milestone.  I would like to think of it as just another day.  I guess that would be naïve.  The day made me eligible for Medicare and seeing what I had been paying for health insurance, that alone should have been reason for celebrating. Now I don’t get to “mental” when birthdays roll around.  Well, not too “mental”.  But if I’m honest, and I try to be honest, this one might be one of the bigger ones, if birthdays are ranked.  You know, like the one that meant I became a teenager or 21 when I was considered an adult.  There were other ones too, but this post isn’t about listing milestone birthdays or is it. 

It seems to me that age 65 has always been tied to “old”.  Strange, though I don’t feel young, I don’t feel old.  At least not the old like I had been taught old was supposed to be.  Yes, things hurt, joints that is, but they have hurt for a long time, so nothing new there.  Yes, I’m not as strong as I once was.  That’s mostly my own fault.  I just don’t do the heavy lifting my work used to require, and I haven’t replaced it with heavy lifting “for fun”.  What can I say, I’m not a gym person.  Working on a weight machine might be wise but unlikely.   

So how do I rank this part of my life?  They say age is how you feel.  If that’s true, my age changes all the time, sometimes in bunches.  But rather than dwell on the things time has taken, I try to focus on the things that remain.  A half-full kinda’ outlook, and I always say attitude makes the difference.  So, I, like everyone, face changes…biological included.  And I know that my time among the breathing shrinks a little each day, but so does yours.  So I look at 65, not as a sign of things that dwell only in my memory, there’s a place for memories, but as a milepost of the things ahead.  For in my life, “things are a changin’”.  But if we are honest every year, even every day, things change because each day we change. 

Life is for the living.  And the “up and around” part of life is for those that keep being “up and around”.  Yes, farming…the actual up at dawn and grunt part…is behind me.  But the sun still comes up doesn’t it…and it comes up for me.  I will continue to find a new rhythm for I have lots to do.  So Wednesday may not have been just another day, but maybe it was…

 

 

(448 Words)  2-10-2017