The dawn of a new decade of living is something I’ve celebrated with gusto for my entire life. Turning 60 was no different, at least not when it came to enthusiasm. The setting (my favorite Cape Cod house ever), the crew (a collection of friends from distinct chapters of my life) and the vibe (80s Tea Dance and a mess of great seafood and pasta), came together to give me a truly wonderful birthday.
It’s taken me more than a couple of days to process the collective hours shared with loved ones. I needed time to pull memories of individual moments and hold them up to the light like the beautiful prisms they are before writing about them.
It was as perfect a birthday as a person could hope to experience.
This doesn’t mean that everyone I love was there. Only one of my sons could come to the Cape, but one is better than none, right? The bolognese middle son and his sweetie cooked for the whole gang to consume after Tea Dance was fantastic and greatly enjoyed. The remaining group of friends who joined me came with a stream of enthusiastic energy and joyfulness and positivity.
We had so much fun.
Sixty is a funny number. It sounds old, even to my ears, yet I don’t feel the way I imagined one would at this age. My birthday eve and birthday evening were both spent in Provincetown and I am confident I was on the same level as any Queen on Commercial Street. I danced and laughed and ate and drank and generally felt electric and wonderfully alive.
What more is there?
Over the course of a few days, I received too many messages and texts and calls conveying birthday greetings to count. Each one was a present that I very much enjoyed opening.
Thank you. ❤️
Recently I’ve seen a number of social media postings declaring that women of a certain vintage aren’t trying to be 25 or 30 with their shared selfies depicting lives of confidence, grace and continued sexual vitality. Instead, they’re attempting to illustrate that women, even those in their 50s and beyond, remain beautifully alive.
That’s who I hope to be.
My decade of being in my fifties was filled with challenges and opportunities, trips and time spent with loved ones, and an array of experiences that touched my heart. I never could have imagined all the wonderful adventures I was lucky enough to welcome in that decade – a situation which was akin to the overwhelming feeling of gratitude I had to find myself and a mess of friends gathered in a special house in a magical setting greeting my next chapter.
I’m not sure how I got to be so fortunate, but none of it is ever taken for granted. I am a very, very lucky woman.
Stick around and we’ll see what my sixties bring, together.
