So yesterday I landed hard on the 60 square!
Yes of course I knew it was coming, I’d peeked at it reluctantly and briefly from the ‘sand’ several times over the year and then equally quickly turned head down back into the sand!
Its a cliche to say life speeds up as you get older but it truly does (please humour me for one day).
When I can get over myself, I know how lucky I am to be here and have my health, freedom, choices a good job, friends and family, but I’ll be honest I struggle with the idea of being 60, deterioration of looks and perhaps not being where I’d maybe imagined I’d be at this point in my life. I think that’s why I didn’t really want to celebrate.
I’d managed pretty well with the not celebrating by a) not telling people my age – which is now a bit of an issue in terms of when and how do I break the news to them… hmm – how did I get myself into this mess !!! and b) just saying I’d think about it the next day, then the next day….
However my sister was not having any of it, and she insisted she would come and visit as I could not be on my own on this day. In the end the plans changed and I had a small get together in Greenwich – enjoying the incredible skyline views and the company of my kids and sisters – feeling loved and cared for in a way I’d not felt for a while.
Buoyed by their love and support I enter this new decade with a sense of gratitude and determination to make it as joyful as I can. And now I just have to work out how to tell some of my friends that I was actually 60 last week …… or maybe I leave it for another year – lets face no one will ask me again for a while now….
Chapter 4 