It’s Only a Number

If it is only a number, it seemed a significant one to me. Friends tell me about their angst over turning forty or fifty or sixty. But I’m here to tell you that turning seventy gave me plenty to think about.

I don’t mean the fact that there are fewer years ahead than behind, although that did cross my mind. What came to me in waves sometime in mid-November when the realization hit me square in the head that I was about to be seventy, were memories. They were more than memories and more like mini movies, playing in vivid detail and color. I supposed that’s what Ebenezer Scrooge had going for him while on his trip with the Ghost of Christmas Past as he relived parts of his youth. And the scenes kept coming.

I thought for a while that I might be dying, what with all of my life flashing before my eyes, but obviously that didn’t happen. I still can’t account for the visits from my grandmothers, from Christmases long ago, from people long dead, and at first they alarmed me, but then I got accustomed to having them show up, and I began to enjoy them. And then they stopped.

I guess that whatever sent them felt that enough past life was enough. I began instead to plan a party for my family here, the family that surrounds me every day, the family that shows up at the hospital, that calls to find out how I am by now.

And what a party it was. Some forty or fifty of my family turned up at Il Postino Italian restaurant last Tuesday, some to have a glass of Chianti and a chat, others to have dinner. Some friends hadn’t seen each other for a long time and the party provided them a kind of reunion. Linda could not be talked out of bringing my birthday cake, a four-tiered chocolate beauty filled with cherries and kirsch. Craig took time away from his Palm Spring stay to drive over for the evening. Terry and Lean stopped by on their way to another party, and I know that my party was out of their way. Cards by the score arrived (I’d requested a no-gift party), hugs and more hugs. And so it went, every minute golden. I did the best I could working the room, but I couldn’t sit down with everyone. Didn’t matter. My family knows how to make friends, and they did just that.

I’ve spent the last few days pondering everything, how so many wonderful people have come to be in my life. I have no specific answers, and all I can do is be grateful for the love and kindness they show me. Lorenzo, the manager of the restaurant, said that he felt that love and esteem surging through the room, and I felt it too.

Our lives all take forks in the road, and sometimes those forks lead us away from friends and people and even relatives we once were close to. They have their own forks in the road, new interests and responsibilities, often new families. That’s okay after all, and we find ourselves in places that Providence puts us, with the family we make and hold dear. For those turns in the road for that that family that I’ve found along it, I am more grateful than I can express.

So, if it’s only a number, it’s a grand one. Don’t worry about approaching it; your family will be right there to cheer you on. By the way, this is the last rave about my 70th, promise.

Robert Heylmun