I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about when I turn 70, even though it’s 21 months away, and what’s the point? It’s going to happen anyway.
After all, I spent a lot of time over the years thinking how devastated I would be when Willow The Best Dog There Is™ dies, and it didn’t make me any less devastated when it happened. So why worry about being almost 70? because it will be just as surprising — no, astonishing — as I imagined it would be when it happens.
It means I’ve been stumbling along for a long, long, long time, long enough to know the 10 or 20 or 30 years to go will be a long time, too, so better to get down to living it than wondering about how long a time has passed.
I remember “Volare” by Domenico Modugno being a new song my mom loved, and that was the summer of 1958, and I remember hearing “Calendar Girl” on my brother’s transistor radio from WKBW in Buffalo, New York, and I was amazed to learn there were other radio stations in other cities far away, and that must be early 1961.
It was a long, long, long time ago, which — especially on the days when it feels like the years passed in a flash — is good to know, because I have less time left to live than I have lived so far, but (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise) it all means that I have a long time left, which is good to know because I have a lot of stuff left to do (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise).
What’s that you say? The creek seems to be rising? Oh, heck. I guess I’d better get busy.
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