It is strange turning 60. Of course, it has been five months since I did, but still. Someone once said that it was far easier turning 60 than staying 60. I was all ready to turn 60, but I never thought about the fact that I would have to stay 60 for a whole year. Then, again of course, I would turn 61 and would be officially a senior citizen.
It has been 34 years since I completed preachers’ school, 31 years since I moved to Spokane, 24 years since I graduated college, 14 years since I planted that church in Odessa, MO, six years since I decided to go into the Assembly of God, a year and a half since I left the AG. Ella and I have been married over 39 years. Our children are in their early 30’s and late 20’s.
I have waked (waken, woken?) up old, and I do not remember turning old.
There were things I wanted to do that I will never do. I suppose that is the complaint of every older man, but I am not every older man. I am me, and I feel what I feel more strongly than I feel what others feel.
I find myself older than every teacher I ever had with the possible exception of one in college. Every other one, elementary, Jr High, High School, college, Preachers’ School, all of the teachers I have ever had, I am older than they were.
Yet when I look at my wife, who is almost as old as I am, I do not see an older woman. I see Ella.
When I was a young man, I visited with an old man whose wife had alzheimer’s. she sat there beside him, a doddering old woman with no mind and wrinkled to pieces. He said that when he looks at her, she didn’t look any older than she did when they got married. I thought that his mind was gone. That woman was old.
We are not nearly that old, as old as they were, – I think – but it is the same with us. I do not see her as older, but I see her as her. She, to me, is timeless and ageless. Yes, her hair is graying – although it looks more sreaked than gray – and she has wrinkles in places she didn’t used to have wrinkles in, but she is still my love. And I guess I look at her through the lenses of love.
That sounded weird, but it is true.
And I look in the mirror and am truly surprised at myself. I look my age.
Turning 60 was a lot easier than staying 60. How in the world did such a cool young rebel like me ever turn into an old guy?
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