60

Damn -- I have the misfortune to share a birthday with the Preznit, though the nincompoop in chief is a year older.

This is one on those round numbered occasions supposed to inspire deep thoughts. I can't say I have any of those. But I'll indulge myself a little -- what else is a blog for?

• I have now reached the age which my mother was at when I became enough of an adult to get to know her as an adult. She had me at nearly 40 after 15 years of marriage. In a sense I was an interruption of her adult life. When I fully decamped from home for colleges and my own path, she seized the opportunity to enjoy a pretty good fifteen years, traveling and studying what interested her. She'd fulfilled her understanding of her duty to my father and the world by raising me -- next those fifteen years were her freest after college I think. It was a good time to know her. Some day I'll write more about this interesting woman who embodied so many contradictions as an educated, independent person who allowed conventional constraints on women's roles to limit her in ways that now seem unthinkable.

• I've now reached the age at which I've always found women most attractive. I never quite got it why I was supposed to turn on to youth. I look at women who have been around a few blocks and love them! In particular, I remember the spring of 1985, when, taken along on one of my mother's trips, I was included in a hiking party of 60ish women atop the Great Divide in Colorado. Nirvana for me!

Life is good at 60.