Shedding Years Growing Older, Feeling Younger

Shedding Years The President of the United States has asked me to get on with the business of living. It is something I have been asking of myself as well; so, at least, we are in political agreement on that score. I am, ideologically, so far to his left that I am not even in the same room with him; but I am, indeed, in the same country. I have been with him since the World Trade Center disaster, and I salute him. So often we have heard members of the clergy say, ". . . and pray for our president," and I have not even really heard the words. On the six-month anniversary of that terrible day of 9/11, as I was falling asleep, I thought of the tremendous burden that is with George W. Bush daily, hourly, every minutethe responsibility for all of us in this world of turmoiland I did pray for him, in a very personal way. With a long history of being a cooperative person, I want to do as the president asks. It's the "getting on" part that I am still unsure about. Since publishing It Must Have Been Moonglow, however, I have received some remarkable advice from readers whose courage, stamina, and empathy have pointed me in the direction of another book. What their correspondence has done for me has helped me shed years. I am younger at eighty-two than I was at eighty. If putting my life on paper and making friends in the process is rejuvenating, then I see a large investment in ink-jet printer refills, and much to write before I sleep. One evening at a dinner table, I heard about a woman who, at age sixty-five, decided that she was simply going to stop counting birthdays ahead and would count them backward. Thus, when she turned sixty-six she chose, instead, to be sixty-four. She started back down. She kept this up for a number of years, calculating her age in her own unique way, not only to her friends and acquaintances, but to the bureau of motor vehicles. With each change of age, she changed her hair color, too. How long this went on, how well she got away with itwhether it is a slightly exaggerated storyI am not sure. But it shows a pretty good attitude. For some reason, I remember being forty-two as the best age to be. When I stop to examine why that is the year I choose, it must be that my children were fourteen, twelve, and eight; I was no longer wrapped up in domestic dailiness and could find a place for myself in the greater community; my husband knew where he was in his career and where he was going; life's problems were present, but they were solvable. So now that I am eighty-two, and if the counting-back theory from sixty-five can work, I'll be ninety-seven when I turn forty-two. There are worse goals to have. I had an aunt who was so full of love that it spilled out of herto old friends everywhere, to friends she had just met, to relatives with whom she corresponded voluminously, and, most especially, to her sister's firstborn: me. And to my children. She remembered each and every birthday by telling each child, whatever birthday it was, that they had reached the best age that anyone could be: two, ten, fifteen, thirty. Just reach that year and it will be a wonderful year. When I turned eighty, I missed her especially. Would she think that was the best year? "Yes," I can tell her. "Yes, in many ways." I feel liberated to be at a point in my life when I know I am beyond changing what has been. For good or bad, I have done what I have done, have chosen whatever I chose, have lived how I have lived. (Of course, I still have to do my best until 2016, when I celebrate that forty-second birthday!) That is a freeing feeling. We do not have to dwell on the past. It is too late for "what ifs." We can be thankful for who we have become, whoever we are; know that we have made the journey the beGreene, Phyllis is the author of 'Shedding Years Growing Older, Feeling Younger' with ISBN 9780375509193 and ISBN 0375509194.