So, it’s the day before we leave Arizona for Minnesota. This is our fifth winter in Maricopa and leaving is bittersweet. We both feel so blessed to be able to enjoy the best of two worlds the way we do. To escape the harshness of the Minnesota winter and the dreaded heat of the Arizona summer. To be able to come home to receding snow banks, ice going out on the lakes and the new beginning of another summer at the lake. To a happy reunion with loved ones, we left behind five months ago and sad good byes to friend’s neighbors and family members we have left here in the southwest. God willing, we will be back.
I turned 80 this spring and it was a watershed moment for me. Up and until this year the numerals never bothered me. When I retired, I was a healthy sixty, a young seventy and then along came eighty and oh my God, I don’t remember anyone in my family reaching ninety and like Robert Frost, “I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.” I looked it up and Frost didn’t make ninety either. So, what does this say? It says quit playing with the numbers and take each day as it comes. It’s not up to you, my friend. Be cautious, be prudent, be cheerful and thankful and in the end, it will be a life well lived.
George Burns the comedian, who by the way lived past a hundred, once sang a song called, “I wish I was eighteen again. “Well to be truthful he didn’t sing he chanted but that’s neither here or there and so back to the song. Do I wish I was eighteen again? Well, if I could offer this caveat, maybe. To be eighteen and know what I know now? It might help me not to make the mistakes I did but yet making those mistakes was all part of the experience so with that in mind I have to say no. There are no shortcuts in life. You take it as it comes and you chew it up and either spit it out if it’s too bitter-- or swallow it, digest it and savor it for the rest of your life.
I have known so many people who never made eighty but left their mark on this world all the same. They lived each day to the fullest and never took the next day for granted. On the other hand, I have known people who lived well beyond eighty and although I’m not here to judge them, I always felt they had so much more to offer then they did. Those regrets that can comeback to you, are not easy to live with when you can’t go back to change them.
My friend Pat likes to chide me for always having a project going. She wants me to take life easy and as well-meaning as that is, it’s not the way I’m wired. I get so much pleasure out of being useful. I once worked for a man who was well into his eighties and I made the mistake of asking him when he was going to retire. “Probably never,” he said. “I have retired many times but always there was something that kept running inside of me that I couldn’t shut off and I would find myself looking for another project. It’s my feeling that when I run out of projects-- I will run out of life. Is that what you want?”
So, I’m back for another summer and my heart is full. I know next week I will go walk my dog down the road and cars will stop and old friends will roll down the window and say “Welcome back” and I will say,” It’s good to be back.”
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