The first post

The idea for this blog was conceived on my sixtieth birthday, almost 4 years ago. It has had a long gestation!  Even as I plan to launch it I find myself having second thoughts (I’m told this is natural – new things are scary) but I have decided that I’m going to go for it.  I believe this will always be a work in progress (as am I) and that both the blog and I will improve with time. So here goes – a little essay about the birth of this idea written at the dawn of my sixth decade.

Who Is Elva…

The last few notes of the birthday song were still hanging in the air when a little voice piped up and asked “who is Elva? I thought we were singing happy birthday to Gramma.”

Who is Elva indeed….

I had been dreading this birthday for months. Turning sixty loomed like a dark cloud, a threshold, a dark doorway through which I was being pushed.  It was like I  suddenly discovered  I had reached the last third of a book – the novel I was reading and loving would be winding down. As much as I was excited to learn how the story would end I was very reluctant to put the book away.  It was making me feel mortal and morbid.

My mother was 64 when she passed – a mere four years older than I was about to turn.  Should history repeat itself I felt like I was suddenly in a dreadful hurry to cram a lot of stuff into the time that remained – a hurry, full of dread.

I had a list as long as my arm of things I would no longer have the opportunity to be;  an astronaut, a marine biologist, a super model.  Not that I’d ever aspired to be any of those things but the potential was gone.  I would probably never win an Academy Award or the Nobel Prize, never record a number one hit or win an Olympic gold medal.  My day in the sun was fading – I was about to turn sixty.

Consumed as I was with the prospect of my demise I missed all the subtle signs that my family was planning  a surprise celebration of that which I was dreading.  Part of me was hopeful the birthday would be acknowledged – I had been to several commemorations of similar milestones  which had been very enjoyable – but the other part of me wished I could slide into sixtydom with no fanfare whatsoever, with no one the wiser.

I’m told several members of my family questioned the rationale behind the surprise, worried I might not be receptive to such joviality in the face of what I considered certain doom – but they forged ahead undaunted by my gloom.  I’m glad they did.

I’ve rarely experienced such a public epiphany – rarely been smacked in the face with such poignancy to make me cry.  When that little voice spoke up for Gramma every negative feeling I had been wrestling with over the past months floated away.  As the crowd raised their voices for a second rendition, this time wishing Happy Birthday to Gramma, my sixth decade dawned with the knowledge that I may in fact be in the last third of my story but the chapters are still mine to write.