The first thing I managed to do after summer school was fall down the stairs. I bonked my head, back and elbow hard enough to be a gimp for a week. Not the form of rest I had in mind…

So much for my plans. Life happens and Who’s to say that’s not part of The Plan. I’m hinting of God of course. It seems that’s the usual meeting place, when there’s no control and no help in sight….”uh, hello, God (Higher Power, Universe, Life Force)  uh, it’s me, uh, …down here.”

It doesn’t have to be an accident. I hear it from all my friends, the insistent changes that come with aging.  The old bod doesn’t get up and go like it used to. The cumulative effect of not enough exercise, or flossing, too many cocktails of diet coke and ibuprofen finally undercut the temple of God.  Or like yesterday, when the power was out for 10 hours and the temperature and humidity were 100 and big ants were cutting a highway from the ground to the 3rd story veranda where me and the dogs were panting and praying for a respite. We would have settled for a breeze but the wonder of those ants distracted us!

Seems like everyone I know is going through some version of unwelcome change.

Our society hasn’t prepared us well for change or for the third part of age. We’re being sold youth as the highest aim of desire. What an upside-down world! Please, let’s be counter-culture!

As our bodies soften, why can’t we accept that as a good thing? Years ago, a man that worked for me said that his sensation of being loved was getting smothered in big flabby arms and breasts because that’s the way his mom, aunts and grandmothers were built. Our bodies are not ourselves. Our bodies are sacred to those who love us, to children, dogs and lovers, in ways we never think about because we see ourselves only with our own eyes –  and not just ourselves, but everything else too. We see the world as we see it, not as it truly is in it’s magnificent, glorious LARGENESS.

This week I couldn’t be productive, instead I was given the gift of being at home with my dogs on a scale that they crave. I used to think that ticks were a plague but now I see ticks as one-on-one time with each dog – connect as I dis-connect… ticks that is. Weird, heh? This small, humorous joy comes as joy often comes: in unexpected ways and places.

We need to slow down to experience the gratitude and wonder of being alive in this extraordinary world, to notice the minute and exquisite details in the ordinary. This is stuff that a retirement nest-egg can’t give you.

I want to grow old together with my friends and savor these capstone years for what they are – a gift of age.

“Grow old with me, the best is yet to be …”