A daughter looks at seventy

I’ve been writing this post for almost 25 years. Sure, I’ve been known to procrastinate, but that isn’t the case this time. No, this post has been – just like me – a work in progress. You see, I’m turning 70 at the end of the month (please act surprised) and that’s a daunting milestone for most folks, but for me, 70 has been the Demogorgon shadowing me since my mother died in 2002 – at the age of… yes, 70.

**My movie star mom set the bar high for birthdays. I only wish she had been able to celebrate a few more of her own.**

I was 45 when I lost both of my parents. Correction – they weren’t lost – they were stolen by cancer. My father was 79 – not a bad run – but my mother was only 70. And I’ve carried around a chip – more like a cinderblock some days – on my shoulder about it for a very long time. Even after all these years, it’s still an automatic equation I do in my head when I come across an obituary – how many years longer did that person live than my mother. Grief math is real and it’s even more painful than Algebra 2. It made me resentful for a very long time, but I’m grateful for some good friends whose own losses have helped mollify my perspective over the years. Like my friend Maryanne who was five years old when her mother died at 35 – unfathomable. And Jen who was only 21 when her mother died in a car accident when she was 53. By the way, both of these women grew up to be extraordinary mothers – which seems just right.

Look, I know I’m not special – well, maybe to a few people – lots of folks surpass the age at which a parent died. And for many, just like me, it is a landmark event that makes you scrutinize your own life more intensely. It’s a bit like taking a selfie from a low angle and it’s not always a pretty picture.

I thought that my overwhelming feeling about reaching the age at which my mother died would be relief – I made it. I wasn’t prepared for the existential dread of it all. It began the first of the year with sudden waves of sadness and anxiety. I could feel myself missing my mother more than usual – a physical longing to be in her presence again. And I started revisiting her illness and death in ways I had not done in a long time – vivid images of her beautiful face wincing from the hideous pain that was strangling her. I’ve been so lucky over the years that when I see my mother in my dreams she is never sick. I mean my dreams are not always the gauzy fluff Hallmark movies are made of – sometimes she’s cranky and we argue, but she is beautiful and well.

**Memes are so funny – until they’re not.**

It took me a while to realize that part of my anxiety was the reality of facing my own mortality. In the haunting lyrics of the late great John Prine – I am an old woman. Me! Sweet suffering Jesus, how did that happen? And even with my superpower of denial, I couldn’t hide from my angst because it seems like every other person I know turned 70 this year. I guess that makes sense. I’m on a group text chain with about 10 women I went to high school with – including two I’ve known since elementary school. The group doesn’t overshare and usually just chimes in for birthdays, news of grandchildren, and more so in the past few years – illness and death. Two of the women in the chain have been widowed recently and more than a few have had some serious health issues. One of my closest friends from the group was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago. That one shattered me. She’s no longer able to participate in the group chat, but her husband checks in with us now and again to give us updates – and a whole hell of a lot of perspective on living.

Carol, Lee Anne and me – We were lucky to be seated alphabetically in Mrs. Crabel’s 4th grade class at Spotswood Elementary and became lifelong friends. We celebrated Lee Anne’s 70th in April at a 70s music concert. We may have danced like no one was watching.

So there have been a lot of sweet and funny 70^th birthday wishes and memes being exchanged this year. I think I’m the last to go and I hope I can still find the messages amusing. It’s a diverse group of women – we certainly don’t all align politically and I’m the only gay in the village – but we share a unique history. We have known each other through braces and acne and weddings and funerals. And it is a great comfort to me to still be connected with people who knew my parents.

**This is Tom – one of my very favorite men who also happens to be my attorney. Fun fact- he’s a real life Atticus Finch and we celebrated his 70th a few weeks ago.**

My mother was big on birthdays and everyone in our gang looked forward to my party every year. To be fair, I think their enthusiasm had more to do with my mother’s amazing crème puffs than me, but it was always a fun day. My last birthday with my mother was spent in the hospital at her bedside. She had been put on a course of steroids and was feeling downright perky – not gorked out on morphine as she was for so much of her last months. A friend brought a beautiful box of pastries to her room, and she was able to eat a bit. It wasn’t my best birthday, but I will always be thankful for the gift of her full and pain-free presence that day.

**Mom’s puffs were the life of the party!**

Even my esthetician, Chagit, turned 70 last month. I’ve known her for longer than either of us can remember, and I think of her foremost as a friend – not the person who gives me bitchin eyebrows every month. Fortunately for me, she’s great at both. Like my high school mates we have been through a lot together – like turning 50. We have laughed ourselves silly about how we totally freaked out all those years ago about what we thought was a milestone. If we make it to 80, I’m sure we’ll still be laughing about it. We’ve both gotten older, but oh, so much wiser. Just ask us.

**Chagit is the Rembrandt of eyebrows and the Jewish mother I didn’t know I needed.**

As my birthday draws closer, I’ve been thinking a lot about my life – especially my regrets. I have plenty of them and for the record, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t. A life without regret is one without reflection. I have a long list of minor ones – like not learning to play the piano and those tragic perms I got in the 80s – and a shorter one that often haunts me – the one that includes things I’ve done that hurt people I deeply loved.

Author Ann Patchett beautifully captures my relationship with regrets in her novel Tom Lake when she writes, “We remember the people we hurt so much more clearly than the people who hurt us.” I am grateful that I remember. Regrets are phantom scars that never quite fully fade away. I think that’s a good thing. They remind us of when we needed to be better – and I hope I have been.

And here’s a little inside elder wisdom for you – don’t fret too much about those people who hurt you. In my experience, karma has been stealth but highly efficient. Patience, Grasshopper – and stay on the high road.

All the cool kids turned 70 this year – even Hope from *thirtysomething*. Time for a reboot? *Silver Yuppies?*

Lately, I’ve also been thinking about legacy. My dear friend Sue who has been an “other” mother to me for a long time, turns 84 later this year and she asked me to help write her obituary. Sue is in good health for the most part, but she’s a lifelong educator and has her lesson plans in order in all phases of her life. She’s accomplished quite a lot in that life and it’s hard to condense it into the standard obit template. Working on this task has made me think about what I would want people to remember about me. Sue doesn’t know this, but she has helped me write my own obituary. She sent me a beautiful birthday card a few years ago that still sits on my desk. The front of the card features an image of poet Amanda Gorman above the words Be the Light. Inside the card, Sue wrote some lovely things to me, but one sentence stood me still and I revisit it like a touchstone on days when those regrets get the best of me.

“I doubt that you have seldom met a person or cause that you did not embrace in one form or another.”

That’s it. That’s my obit. And it’s enough, but I do hope you don’t see it anytime soon.

**I’m so lucky to have Sue as a role model for aging gracefully – with fabulous eyewear.**

My mother’s mother lived to be 90. Go figure – no Fitbit and steeping vegetables in bacon fat served my grandmother well. I can’t recall her ever talking about being old, but I do remember being at her house and watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. That was in July of 1969 – a few months before she turned 70. My family were all upstairs asleep – Grandma and I were the only ones who had stayed up late. We sat on the couch together in the dark watching the grainy coverage and when Armstrong took his one giant leap for mankind, my grandmother shook her head and softly said, “I never thought I’d see the day.” I think that’s how I’ve felt about turning 70 for a very long time. I’m not a fatalist at all – I just couldn’t imagine what living longer than my mother would look like. I’ve never been great with maps or directions, and I will soon be entering unchartered territory. I guess I’m lucky I have so many good folks a wee bit ahead of me on the trail. I hope they drop a few Werther’s from their pockets along the way to guide me.

**Grandma saw some things in her 90 years.**

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to celebrate this biggie birthday. The last thing I wanted was a party – too loud, too much. I knew I wanted to be near water – close to nature and far away from the madding crowd. It’s a bit tricky because my birthday falls at the end of summer when it is still beastly hot where I live. And to know me, is to know that if I’m hot, ain’t nobody happy. So, if all goes well, I’ll be on the rugged coast of northern California on a deck that hangs over the Pacific – wearing a hoodie and holding an Olivia Pope sized glass of red wine. I’ll be with my dear wife, my beloved sister and my best friend from college – who, of course, also turned 70 this year. Her brother – her best friend – died last year. He was 72. I can do the math, but I detest it.

The consistently wise Anne Lamott wrote an essay for The Washington Post a few years ago on the occasion of her 70^th birthday and said, “I think I am only 57, but the paperwork does not back this up.” I would say neither do the knees, but here we are. And I’ll take it with abundant gratitude – and maybe if I’m lucky, a crème puff or two.

**My mother loved this quote by novelist Henry Miller and even found it on a fridge magnet. I’ve kept it close for almost 25 years and** **understand it more fully now that I’m of a certain age. I think it sounds like a worthy mission statement for my next decade. Cheers, Mom!**

Baby steps

**Mike and me. Senior subs. #milestones**

I don’t trust people who say they have no regrets and I lump them into the same category as the arrogant folks who swear that they floss every day. Come on now, EVERYONE has regrets, even Frank Sinatra had a few. Unfortunately, regrets cannot be removed as easily as plaque, and they can cause emotional decay if left unattended. I should know. I’m approaching a milestone birthday the end of the month and my regrets could use a good cleaning. Okay, I promise I’m done with the dental analogies – I know some of you are running your tongue along the back of your teeth to do a quick check. Too late – you missed a day or two.

**And they** **often leave a lump in your throat.**

Regrets are never one size fits all. Some are tiny – like wishing you had ordered the salmon instead of the tuna. That’s why I always order the salmon. Those regrets du jour are easy enough to get over. It’s the biggies that haunt you for a long time – like the rest of your life. I regret that I didn’t hold my mother’s hand more during the eight months she was dying. She had beautiful hands – so very feminine with long slender fingers. I saved a pair of her gloves after she died, and I’ve pulled them out and put them on from time to time in the 20 years she has been gone. I stretch my fingers out as far as I can and squint a little to create a soft lens and I can almost see her hands. Almost. So why didn’t I hold her hand more? Well, for starters, she wasn’t exactly the affectionate type. She wasn’t cold – affection was just never her love language. She also had a wickedly dry sense of humor and if I had held her hand too much, she probably would have said, “Do you think I’m dying or something?” I feel lucky that I got a bit of her humor and making her laugh was especially satisfying. One of the last times I entered her hospital room, she was awake but so very weak and laying quietly in her bed. She smiled when I came in and I said, “Don’t get up.” I could see her fragile chest shake with laughter. It is the kind of memory that can save you on a bleak day when regret is taunting you.

**My mother loved this quote. She died at 70 which makes it all the more powerful to me.**

You can organize your walk-in closet of regrets in several ways – tidy bins of them – professional, personal, financial, and so on. I can honestly say that I only have one professional regret, but it’s a whopper that cost me a great deal. I gave someone a second chance and they used it for evil instead of good. They tried to destroy me, and they almost succeeded. It took me a long time to recover from such deception and malice and the acquiescence of others who I once respected. But I’m here to tell you that karma is real, and it almost always catches up with cowards. I invested way too much time in the whys and what ifs of that debacle, but that’s what regret does to you. It can make you doubt yourself, but it can also force you to do a deep dive into your own stuff. And maybe, if you are humble enough to pay attention, you can learn some things.

**Stairway to regret. Photo credit: Tony Cenicloa/NY Times**

There are no soft landings for regrets and the deeply personal ones can shadow your whole life. You might think you’ve moved on – and you probably have for the most part, but then something out of the blue, the thing you just didn’t see coming – can make that faint scar feel like a gaping wound. This happened to me a few weeks ago when I came across an archived NY Times article on the actress Lili Taylor – one of my favorites. The article detailed Taylor’s time quarantining in upstate New York with her family in a rustic farmhouse that she purchased years ago. The home is pretty fantastic, but not in an opulent InStyle magazine sort of way. The original oak floor, doors and stonework were all retained and restored. And Taylor used great colors for a lot of the rooms. It reminded me of the eclectic style that my longtime former partner and I were always drawn to. My memory Rolodex was already racing when I came upon a picture of the staircase leading to the second floor of the house. The wooden steps were painted apple green. Sounds benign enough, right? But that’s when I felt that undeniable undertow of regret overcome me. I sat in front of my laptop and cried. You see, not many people would make that choice of apple green for a staircase. It’s a creative, bold, and confident choice. It’s a choice that doesn’t care if other people think is weird. And that was my former partner to a T. I suppose now is a good time to state emphatically that I am very happily married to my dear wife, the minimalist who favors experience over acquisitions – and having all those feelings about that staircase in no way diminishes the love I have for her. No, in fact, those feelings give me certainty. I know I will never have those same regrets with her. Other ones, no doubt, but not those. My regret, the deepest one of my life, is that I wasn’t a better person all those years ago when I pulverized my sweet partner’s heart. I can make excuses – and I have made plenty over the years – both of my parents had died, and I was completely adrift in my own grief. I was lost and made some very bad decisions. And believe me, I have paid dearly for them. That was a lifetime ago and the afternoon I came upon that apple staircase, I think I finally found a balm for my regret – an odd mixture of memory, forgiveness, and gratitude. Not in equal parts, mind you – forgiveness is a stingy bastard.

I’ve always been a bit of a sentimental fool. I can still cry up my liver watching the Folger’s “Peter Comes Home for Christmas” commercial. Every. Damn. Time. And sometimes I can’t even make it through the opening credits of This is Us with dry eyes. My already flimsy emotional resolve took a beating during lockdown. I find that I cry even more easily now, and I tell people I love them whenever I get a chance – even if it makes them uncomfortable. I’m nicer to strangers and don’t hesitate to call out bullies and mean people. The pandemic illuminated my priorities in a Titanic lifeboat sort of way. I know the things I hold dear in a deeper way, and I have tried to let go of the things – and people – that will never be the way I want them to be. Turns out a mask can only hide so much, but man, letting go is hard – especially for someone like me who always tries to fashion a happy ending. And for the last time – yes, there was room for Leo on that floating door.

I recently had the pleasure of going to the Social Security Administration office to correct my date of birth in their system. Don’t ask me how after all these years that date somehow changed, but I think it might have been easier to just let everyone I know that I had changed my birthday. I had to provide them with my original birth certificate – which looks like it was run over by a horse and buggy and set on fire. I’m just grateful that I have aged better than it has.

Anyway, when I looked at that decrepit document, the first thing I saw were my parents’ names and I felt my eyes fill with tears. They have been gone so long now and it was startling to see their names in writing. And then I saw my tiny footprint – an inkblot floating in the corner of the certificate. My parents lost their first child, so my arrival was an even bigger deal to them and the sweet folks in the tiny town of Waverly, VA. The morning I was born, the doctor who delivered me drove down Main Street still in his scrubs yelling out of his car window, “It’s a girl! It’s a girl!” And everyone knew that the Ores had had a healthy baby. I could hear my parents telling me that story as I looked at my tiny foot and my heart swelled like the cartoon Grinch. I felt so much love for them and that baby girl that I haven’t always been so kind to. And I regret that.

I know I’ve spent too much time thinking about the past and the things I might have done differently. The things I wish I had said – and the things I wish I hadn’t said. The other day I saw a trailer for the new Hugh Jackman film, Reminiscence. The plot of the movie is about as clear as Medicare Part D, but the tag line stood me still: Nothing is more addictive than the past. Damn. I know this to be true and my gift to myself this birthday is to be more present. Yes, I know that sounds like a meme just waiting to happen – prime fodder for Bo Burnham’s blistering parody White Woman’s Instagram. If you haven’t watched it, do yourself a favor and click here. That’s one of the perks of getting older, besides discounted groceries – you can laugh at yourself more easily. Burnham nails it/me – I really do like tiny pumpkins and goat cheese salads, and I have a bobblehead of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and 20 years later, I still miss my mom beyond measure. Sometimes I am a cliché and that doesn’t bother me, because most days now I feel an abiding fondness for that older woman in the Instagram selfie. I’m damn grateful, too, because it took a lot of those inky baby steps to get here.

Present and accounted for.

***This post is dedicated to my favorite songbird* – *the late great Nanci Griffith.***

Love is a mystery, from birth ’til we die.

It’s cross words at morning, by evening entwined.

It’s all that we dream of, sometimes it’s not right.

Love is white roses,

And you never ask why.

Lyrics from Roses on the 4th of July by Nanci Griffith.

Permanent ink

August 26, 2016

I am writing this somewhere over Colorado. The Flight Tracker screen shows that we will arrive at John Wayne Airport in 2 hr. 06 min. I can’t wait to see my sister who will pick me and my wife and my best friend from college up for a long weekend in Newport Beach – her home since January.

Birthday party of four. (Photos by Addison Ore)

My calendar tells me that in 72 hours I will arrive at 60. I thought I was okay about it. Okay as in not freaked out or depressed but in the days leading up to the Big Six-Oh, I have found myself tearing up easily. Not necessarily sad, just emotionally tender.

I’ve been thinking about my parents a lot, so maybe that has something do with it. My father died at 79 and my mother died at 70. I’m really not being morbid, but I’ve always had it in my head that I, too, would die at 70. It’s probably the writer in me – what a gut wrenching story that would make, right? I think 70 used to seem so very far away but now that it’s on my radar, I am thinking that I really don’t want to write that story.

The absence of my parents has been a strong presence in my life for the past 14 years. It’s a bit like the undertow of the ocean. Sometimes I’m barely aware of it, other times I’m almost pulled under by it.

I suppose it’s rather cliché to ponder one’s own mortality at 60, but that is where I find myself in Seat 12E today. Lately, I’ve been looking at my life like one of those stupid slideshows that Facebook creates (why?) from time to time. I see quick images from my past – my high school graduation, a family vacation in Sandbridge, my first (really dumpy) apartment in Annandale, VA. I see joyous things – the births of my niece and nephew – and hard things – the breakup of my longtime relationship. And I see my failures much more clearly than my triumphs.

I also hear random memories – the sound of people playing touch football outside my apartment window on a brilliant fall Sunday afternoon while I float in and out of a nap resting by my partner. I can hear the distant humming of a small plane in flight. I am probably 23 or so. I can smell that day – burning leaves in the distance. I can taste that day – a honey crisp apple.

Memories of my moment.

I thought about that day the first time I read The Hours by Michael Cunningham. There is a passage in that brilliant novel that always stands me still. Clarissa, one of the central characters, is preparing for a dinner party in honor of her dearest friend and former lover Richard, who is dying from AIDS. She recalls a day almost 30 year ago when she and Richard were together.

I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know that feeling. And I…I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more… never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”

That afternoon was my moment.

I’ve been blessed with an abundance of moments since then but that was the crystalline pure singular moment before I knew of death and grief and my own failings.

I just finished watching Everything is Copy in flight, a documentary about the writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron, written and directed by her son, Jacob Bernstein. It reveals a total woman – good, bad and wickedly funny. The title comes from something Ephron’s mother, a Hollywood screenwriter, always said to her kids growing up – “Everything is copy,” – meaning that everything that happens to you is fair game to write about.

The late great Nora Ephron.

Ironically, the one thing that Ephron, who died in 2012, never wrote about was her illness – a serious blood disease that was diagnosed in 2006 and later developed into leukemia. Many of her closest friends were shocked to learn that she had been sick for so long. Ephron had spent her career writing about her life – her parents, her divorces and even her breasts.

In the documentary, her son reflects on why his mother didn’t share something so essential.

I think at the end of my mom’s life, she believed that not everything is copy – that the things you want to keep are not copy. That the people you love are not copy. That what is copy is the stuff you’ve lost, the stuff you’re willing to give away – the things that have been taken from you. She saw everything as copy as a means of controlling the story. Once she became ill, the way to control the story was to make it not exist.

I am fascinated that one of the most prolific and successful memoirists of our time was able to conceal such an intimate part of her life until her death. Ephron was oh so very clever, though, and in some ways wrote her own eulogy at the end of her final novel I Remember Nothing, published two years before her death, which included a list of What I Won’t Miss and What I Will Miss.

You can read both lists here but it is the list of things she will miss that made me tear up on my flight. It’s just a short inventory but it is so lyrically beautiful in its simplicity. It includes, of course, her husband and her sons but also butter and Paris. It includes taking a bath and one for the table. And pie.

Her list made me think of my own list. I’m not copying but I’m down with Paris and pie, too. And scrawling my list on my ever handy writing pad was a timely exercise in gratitude.

Musings from 40,000 feet.

What I Will Miss

Joy

My sister

Rain

Thunderstorms

Kittens

The gloaming

Wine

Looking at the wine list

Pouring my wife another glass of wine

Dolphins

Lightning bugs

Frank Sinatra

Newsprint on my fingers from the Sunday NY Times

Independent films in tiny theaters

Communion

Pens

Pencils

Paper

Postcards

The sound of a foghorn

The sound of good friends laughing at the dinner table

The sound of crunching leaves on a fall walk

College football

Holy Week

Palm trees

Watching my wife cut up vegetables

Pizza

Sushi

Kathy Ausen’s chocolate chip cookies

Speaking bad Italian in Italy

joy

Postscript: I made it to Newport Beach and I made it to 60. So far, so good. I’ve blown out a lot of candles on a lot of birthday desserts lately and my wish has been consistent. In fact, my wish has become my mantra for this next chapter of my life. It’s short and it’s sweet and I want to keep it in front of me every day along the way. So I gave myself a little birthday present – a tattoo – as a reminder.

Nora Ephron’s mother was right – everything is copy. And I don’t want to miss a moment.

What could go wrong?

Sparkly wishes, sparkly days.

A work in progress

That’s me partying like it’s 1957.

I’m turning 60 later this month. There, I said it.

I know what you’re thinking. “Gee, you don’t look it.”

Work with me here.

The ever wise and wicked funny Anne Lamott wrote a marvelous Facebook post last year about turning 61. She said she thought she was only 47 and then she checked the paperwork. I get it. I don’t know how I got here so fast.

Most folks have a bit of angst about such a milestone birthday and the universe has certainly conspired to humble me as I approach the Big One. Funny, I can remember when 40 was the Big One. At least I think I can remember.

Anyway, my year began with losing my job as the leader of a local AIDS service organization. Now that will do wonders for your self-esteem, especially if you are kicked to the curb as ungracefully as I was. After 11 years of heartfelt service, my office was packed up for me and delivered to my home in four FedEx boxes. Ouch.

I’ve always favored thinking outside the box.

My dear wife has a charming saying she uses in delicate situations: “Now that will hurt your feelings.” That about covers it.

Along with my job, I also temporarily lost faith in what I always thought I knew about loyalty and integrity. That was a terribly distasteful feeling but I’m grateful for the many good and kind people who reached out to remind me that these virtues are still alive and well.

I’m not sure I ever thought much about turning 60 but when I did, I guess I assumed I’d be at the peak of my career, not starting a new one. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. You see, I’ve always been a bit of a late bloomer. I was 26 before I got my ears pierced, 48 before I got my first tattoo (yes, I have more than one) and 57 before I was a bride. Oh, and I was in my mid-thirties before I came out. True story, but when I did come out, I came out loud and proud.

I guess you could say that I’m the slow and steady type and I think that served me well for a very long time but there’s no getting around the reality that I feel the meter running these days. I lost two friends in January – both to cancer – and one of them was only 54. And my oldest friend on earth – we met in the 4^th grade – survived a brutal battle with Stage IV tongue cancer before she turned 60 in April.

You can eye-roll a cliché like “Life is not a dress rehearsal” but it’s true. It’s show time and I plan on making the most of my second act. And now that my bleak career midwinter is behind me, most days I’m very excited about what’s next and on my very best days, I’m even grateful for this opportunity to reinvent myself at such a seasoned age.

A handful of my friends have already retired or are counting down the days but an early retirement was never in the cards for me – not too many careers in non-profit afford you that luxury. And the truth is that I don’t want to retire. Maybe if I won the lottery (which I never play) I suppose I would not work and move to the coast of Maine where I would write the next great American novel. Okay, maybe I have thought about it a few times. (Note to self: Buy lottery ticket.)

One of my favorite books, which was turned into a surprisingly good movie, is The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. It’s about a rather sullen man who writes travel guides for reluctant business travelers. Imagine Rick Steves not enjoying travel and writing his guidebooks. It’s a delightful premise for a story.

I think I’ve had an accidental career – actually a few of them – and while I very much enjoyed each of them, I’ve never been particularly strategic with my choices. My first career was in retail management as a buyer and then division manager for a department store chain. This was when the economy was booming and the mall was the hub of civilization. “Going to the mall” was pretty much a part of everyone’s weekend vernacular. Yes, kids, there really was a time when people shopped at the mall, in the dark ages before Amazon Prime.

I loved the energy of retail – every day was different. And I loved the seasons, most especially Christmas. You can’t be in retail and survive it if you don’t get excited about the holiday season. I especially enjoyed assisting the husbands who came in on Christmas Eve looking like a deer in the headlights. You could smell the fear – they needed a gift for their wife and the clock was ticking. They were easy prey for an overpriced sale. And they were clueless. Many of them didn’t even know what size their wife wore and they always asked with desperation, “She can exchange this if she doesn’t like it, right?”

Retail could be a real circus during the holidays.

There are so many women out there who have me to thank for the upgrade on their Christmas gifts in the eighties. You’re welcome.

My two stores were in Charlottesville, VA – still the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived – and I got to know a lot of my customers personally. It may sound a little Lake Wobegonish but it felt really good when Mrs. Shifflett came in to buy a dress for her daughter’s wedding and asked me for help. (Oh, you cynics. I don’t eat meat, either, but I know a good burger when I see one.)

I feel like I got to work in the Golden Age of Retail and I was fortunate when the fall came to be able to transition to a new career in fundraising. A friend of mine from retail was working for the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) in Washington, DC and told me about a brand new position in planned giving. I had no idea what that even meant but I was lucky that their program was just getting off the ground and my track record as a good salesperson was enough to get me in the door.

To my utter amazement, I got the job and thoroughly enjoyed my eight years on staff there. PVA was the first time I was out at work and I was received incredibly warmly by the veterans’ community. Those guys loved me and I loved them back. God, they were funny and disarmingly optimistic. And they drank like the sailors many of them had been.

Veterans Day, Arlington National Cemetery, circa 1996. So proud to be an American.

I learned so much – about science and heart – getting to know so many wonderful people in the spinal cord injured community and I can tell you that not a day goes by that I don’t have a moment where I am intentionally grateful for my mobility. That was PVA’s gift to me.

Those good folks also kindled my patriotism in ways that have remained with me over the years. I think of my time there every Veterans Day – on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month.

If my time at PVA taught me about sacrifice and courage, my time at my last job taught me a lot about stigma and poverty and how they are the natural enemies of HIV prevention. My position also gave me a front row seat to magnificent acts of generosity and compassion – some large ones that came with checks with lots of zeros and some small ones that came in cases of green beans from Costco. All of them mattered.

Fighting the good fight at my last job.

It is an extraordinary thing to spend your work days with passionate people who share a vision and my time there broke my heart wide open in remarkable ways that will inform the rest of my life. And it has ruined me for ever just working for a paycheck.

Nope, I need a side order of a mission statement, even if it’s just one of my own making.

The upside to a forced sabbatical has been the luxury of time to do a lot of pondering about my past and my future. I’ve thought a lot about my parents. Certainly losing them both just a few months apart from each other in my mid-forties was the watershed event of my life. Their deaths, or rather how I handled their deaths, changed the course of my life.

I came across a line in a book recently that stood me still. One of the characters, who has lost a son, explains that he and his wife will often not speak to each other for hours at a time because, “We’ve learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it.” I know now that I tried to escape the deafening din of my own grief in destructive ways and it cost me a great deal. I deeply hurt a few of the people who I held most dear and that can never be undone. And, of course, I hurt myself in ways that only I can fully know.

This has led me to thinking a lot about regrets and for the record, I don’t really buy it when people say they don’t have any. It’s an arrogant reflection on life. I have 1,001 small ones – that I didn’t learn to play the piano, the tragic dress I wore to my senior prom (picture Laura Ingalls in polyester organza) and my early insistence that John Edwards was not a cheater.

Me and my high school doppelgänger, 1973.

But it’s the big ones that I stumble through like thickets at 2:00 AM. I’m not ready for a full confession on those but I will say that I regret saying no more than I regret saying yes. I need to remember this.

I was actually feeling pretty good about myself at 60 until I listened to Bill Clinton’s 42 minute recitation of Hillary’s resume at the Democratic National Convention last week. As I brushed my teeth before going to bed that night, I was afraid to look in the mirror for fear of seeing the reflection of a sloth. Oh well, I still believe in a place called Hope.

That’s me in the mirror. #ImWithHer

I’ll be in California for my actual birthday visiting my younger (damn her) sister. I couldn’t imagine not celebrating this birthday with her. I love her beyond measure and no one knows me as well and deeply as she does. We share an emotional GPS that alerts us when the other is off course in any way. It is an indomitable connection that has kept me tethered to this world in my darkest storms.

Sisters, Sisters. There were never such devoted sisters.

My sister is known for her extravagance and I’m a little nervous about what she might pull out for this celebration. Sissy, if you’re reading this now, I was just kidding about the Tom Ford sunglasses. Sort of.

I didn’t want a big party. I never want a big party. And I most certainly NEVER want a surprise party. And so I will have a sushi (my fav) dinner out with my wife and my sister. The icing on my birthday cake is that my best friend from college will join us the weekend before my birthday for some revelry. She turned 60 in June and is anxious to have me join her in this new bracket so I’m approaching it like signing up for a very exclusive wine club.

I’ve always preferred the more intimate dinner party.

She just sent me the loveliest email that might just be my wish when I blow out my candles. She wrote, “I’m hoping our time might have a magic slow quality to it.” I’m hoping the rest of my life has this quality.

It makes me happy when I just think about looking at those three beautiful faces all in one place for a few precious days.

Me and my best friend from college before hair products were invented, circa 1981.

Sometimes I imagine a soundtrack for my life when I’m processing things in my head.Who needs Pokemon Go when you have an overactive imagination? Lately, I’ve been hearing this Iris Dement song – My Life.

My life, it’s half the way traveled

And still I have not found my way out of this night

My life, it’s tangled in wishes

And so many things that just never turned out right

But I gave joy to my mother and I made my lover smile

And I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting

And I can make it seem better for a while

It is an achingly beautiful song and if you ask me, it’s a pretty damn good resume, too.

I’m embracing 60 with joy.

(All photos property of Addison Ore)

Make a wish

My mother always made me feel special on my birthday. Every year she picked out the perfect Barbie doll, the best stuffed animal, the prettiest bracelet. When I look back on my birthdays as a kid, it’s not so much a particular gift or image that I remember most, it’s a feeling, how the people I love, especially my mom, made me feel important.

For years, my mom hung a Happy Birthday sign above the sink in our kitchen, chunky letters in every color of the rainbow strung together. It was the first thing I’d see when I came downstairs from my bedroom. As I stood sleepy-eyed in my pajamas, she’d sing “Happy Birthday” in a country-western twang with such passion – and volume – even though she doesn’t have the best singing voice. She still calls my sisters and me on every birthday and sings to us. I always let her call go to voicemail because I like to play the message over and over; it makes me smile.

What also made my birthdays so special every year as a kid was being able to design my own birthday cake. We went to a bakery called Mr. Baker, where your senses were greeted with the scent of vanilla icing whenever you stepped through the door. I loved the ritual of going with my mom to pick up my birthday cake and riding home with it sealed in a traditional white cake box. The anticipation of waiting to eat it drove me crazy. At age 36, I have not outgrown that and probably never will.

I took my birthday cake seriously as a kid – and still do. I had obsessions with Snoopy and Garfield when I was a child, so naturally they ended up on a lot of my cakes during my early childhood. I can still picture my double-layer cake with Garfield drawn on the top of it. It was my fifth or sixth birthday, and my whole family was gathered in the dining room, the lights dim and golden. My mom’s face glowed in birthday candlelight as she walked toward me with my Garfield cake, and everyone started to sing “Happy Birthday.” I burst into tears before I could blow out the candles. I ran to my room and threw myself down on the bed, burying my face in my pillow. My mom scooped me up, and I cried into her chest unable to explain the tears.

Now, as an adult, I know the reason. It wasn’t just that my mom ordered me the perfect Garfield cake; it was that everyone I loved was gathered in the same room to celebrate me, my life. That birthday was the first time that I recognized what it means to be truly loved and cared about.

I carried that same feeling with me throughout the day on Wednesday as I celebrated my 36^th birthday. All day I felt surrounded by so much love from the moment I first opened my eyes and saw my husband smiling back at me. Sweet text messages and phone calls trickled in throughout the day, each birthday wish touching my heart. After the tough couple of months I’ve been going through, it felt good to truly feel joyful for one day.

My husband can’t cook, but he’s great at ordering takeout. When I walked into our kitchen on the morning of my birthday, he had set a table for two with a Chick-fil-A biscuit and golden hash browns waiting for me — my twice a year guilty pleasure. He went into work a little later that morning so we could eat breakfast together. It was a simple gesture, but it felt grand to me.

Later that afternoon, two of my dear friends treated me to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants. When I arrived, they were seated in a booth with a small flower pot of yellow Gerbera daisies on the table and the biggest balloon I had ever seen attached to it with spirals of multicolored ribbon. I shrieked with glee when I saw it — and teared up a little, too. Those little touches sure made this birthday girl feel special. I left our lunch that day with my heart full — and my face sore from laughing so much. Good friends always know what our hearts need.

Afterwards, I went for a stroll in the woods with my dog Molly, and as I walked among the towering pines and the wisteria in bloom, I paused and looked up, taking it all in, this vast and beautiful world. My eyes, my senses, my heart — they felt wide open. In the middle of the woods, this place that I cherish, my daily haven, I felt a deep connection to the universe. Among the rubble of winter’s fallen trees and bare branches, new life was unfurling all around me. Birds chirped. Four monarch butterflies danced in a figure eight near me. Wisteria’s delicate lavender flowers clung to their vine. I thought about these last two months and all the grief that has consumed me, and I realized even in the midst of sorrow there are gifts. You just have to open your eyes, and your heart to see them.

When I got home, there was a card waiting from me from my best friend Addison, who I share this blog with. The cover of the card pictures a cluster of cars, traveling in different directions, and a young girl on a bike looking over her shoulder while pedaling away from them. “I like to think that this is you pedaling even further past the grief that began this year,” she wrote. “You’re looking back a wee bit but pedaling forward to your next adventure.”

I love that analogy. It’s always a comfort when those we love can see a future beyond our grief. Reading Addison’s words gave me hope. Yes, I’m still glancing back at the past as I weather this season of change, but deep in my heart I believe the best is yet to come. Birthdays are a perfect way to mark a new beginning.

That night my oldest sister, brother-in-law and two nephews sang “Happy Birthday” to me via FaceTime – a virtual birthday party. Hearing my sweet nephews’ voices in the chorus of adults made me laugh as they sang with such fervor. This time there weren’t any tears, just laughter and gratitude. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and made a wish. I wished for joy, but after I blew out the candles, and opened my eyes, I realized I already have it.

Bookends

Two writers. One blog.

birthday

A daughter looks at seventy

Permanent ink

A work in progress

Make a wish