Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

I have been obsessed with the minutia of aging, examining every new line, every wiry hair on my chin (prompting immediate removal), every unfamiliar ache in the morning. But when asked to write a tribute for a friend’s milestone birthday, I go whole-hog in the other direction– not just offering congratulations, but taking the opportunity to outline, sometimes in exhaustive detail, why their life has been well-lived.  I ignore tired jokes about wrinkles, slumping shoulders, or forgetfulness.

Almost as if I were writing their advance obituary.

But when it comes to my own Big Birthdays, I’ve mostly ignored them. When I turned 70, Dan planned a sweet mini reunion with friends and family, complete with a cruise on beautiful Lake Minnetonka. It was the first time since I turned 40 that I stopped to consider what another decade meant.

Looking back now at 40 – that was a downer. I was convinced life as I knew it was ending. I imagined myself turning into a wrinkled crone by the end of the week. I spent several hundred dollars on face creams that promised to forestall the ravages of age. Some of them made my eyes burn. I ended up tossing most of the unused jars when I realized I wasn’t actually disintegrating. I didn’t look that bad. I could continue to be vain!

Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash

But this summer I turned 80, and although I didn’t anticipate it, I could feel agitation building as the date drew closer. I set boundaries:

No, no reunions, no celebrations. 

No, I don’t want anything special! 
No gifts – we have nowhere to put anything! 

Do I really have to go to the Sages Lunch this year, when I helped organize it last year?

At one point I even considered writing my own obituary, not out of despair, but practicality. After all, at 80, every year feels a bit more like a crapshoot. But then I remembered – I’m not very afraid of death, although like most people, I hope it will be quick and relatively painless. So if I wasn’t especially fearful, why the restlessness? Why the resistance?

A week before my birthday, I was meditating outdoors with a small group in the clear early morning light in Boulder. Someone read a John O’Donohue poem on longing before we began, and one line stuck with me like a mantra: May a secret Providence guide your thought…”

Fifteen minutes into the silence, Providence – The Great Whatever – answered “You are supposed to write letters to 80 people to tell them how they have changed you.”

It was loud.  It could not be ignored.  It was also rather weird –so clear, it startled me. The universe doesn’t usually shout at me.

And so I began. At first I wondered if I even knew 80 people well enough to write to. But it turns out that at 80, you’ve lived a long time and met a lot of people. As I started making a list, I quickly passed 80. I began to recall how each one was memorable, and why.  Some names were easy. The memories were warm, the lessons clear. Others required more work, were uncomfortable. I had to ask: how did this person change me, even if the change came through friction rather than closeness? Some were no longer living. Some I had lost touch with. In a few cases, I already had letters written – messages I’d sent to the families of friends who’d died, telling them what that person had meant to me. I had saved copies. I added them to the list.

And then I realized something else: not all letters would go to individuals. Sometimes it was groups of people who had shaped me — a writing class, a church committee, a circle of friends. And sometimes the letter could be to a thing — a dining room table from my childhood, or a familiar object that held memory like a sponge. Always, behind the inanimate, were people. Always, it came back to connection.

Oh my.  What seemed, when Providence’s voice boomed, at first like an impossible assignment –  80 letters for 80 years – suddenly feels doable. More than that, it feels necessary. Because in uncovering the people and memories that shaped me, I am also writing something else: a quiet testimony to what I’ve always known, deep down. 

I did not arrive at 80 on my own.

I got here on the shoulders of so many who walked beside me, talked me down, saved my bacon, gave me new direction, nudged me forward when I was stuck, or simply witnessed my becoming. Big influences, small gestures, words that stayed with me — it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the accumulation of moments, and the gratitude I feel for having been changed, again and again, by the presence of others.

In this photo, I am the white-haired 80-year-old, with some of my best friends from Tappan Junior High School, Ann Arbor Michigan.  We met this summer to remember how important we have been in each other’s lives.  This “letter” is for them…and the several who were there in body or spirit but not in this picture. My friend Elsa, second from the right, describes us as a hive…that’s the way that it feels, except there is no queen bee.

“Best friends” from the past and now…

And maybe, just maybe, Providence will answer if I become sufficiently agitated and self-centered and, therefore, speak again when I need a new assignment.

Oh — maybe most important: 80 is not a boundary, just another irrelevant human marker, an indicator our of our futile attempts to corral time.

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