Something So Special About 55
This year, I turn 55.
Not till November, but you need to know that I’ve had my eye on this birthday for quite some time. I will be talking about it a lot, this year.
For whatever reason, the “decade” birthdays - the ones with a “zero”, like age 30, 40, 50, etc. - don’t give me near as much pause as the ones with a “five” on the end.
Best as I can figure, the ones with a “five” on the end mean that I am closer to the next decade than the one previous.
It seems that, if you will pardon my “prose”, if someone is going to lose their ‘ish, they do it shortly after age 45 or 55. Aw, every freaking time. What is it with the middle?!
If I can make it past 55 and not suddenly decide that I am “deconstructing my faith” (that’s the new hipspeak that’s all over the interwebs right now…donotgetmegoingonthatone)
If I can make it to this age and not have become a different person, not buy the farm or sell the farm, not suddenly decide to milk goats (if I literally never cared about that before) or turn my back on faithful friends, or join my third MLM, or get myself pseudo-degreed and quasi-ordained, all because I’m anxious and desperate to create another income stream in my, um, “senior years” (not because I am called or tapped by the Holy Ghost to do it)…
…if I can make it past 55, yet escape wildly indulging myself in some sort of identity and midlife crisis, at the expense of all my friends??
If I haven’t lost my bearings by age 55…
…I think I might have paid the price to be a consistent stable, trustworthy voice in the lives of the people I care about.
Hallelujah. Please, God. Because the world needs us. It needs us Freedom Fighters - the ones who fight to stay free from the need to reinvent ourselves.
Because I can pretend to be a stable woman because I grasp for influence. But my life won't become a positive pattern of life for others to follow until I become faithful and consistent. (And if you think that means never taking chances, or never doing a new thing with a gift that has always been in you…I’m certain you don’t know me. My life has been one big, fat episode of taking chances. The last decade of my life has been one big ride of risk and reward, and I see no end in sight. It’s an almost daily reality. I wish I could NOT take chances and do new things - hello, #enneagram5here !)
So here I am, light-speckled and paint-stained, and content to simply be who I am. I'm always in imminent danger of becoming an exceedingly ordinary woman, and glad to be so, with a life like that.
In turn, that puts me in imminent danger of becoming a little bit extraordinary, somehow. One accidentally gains a small-but-wise following with a life like that.
And, last but not least, by default, I’m always in imminent danger of a poetry writing sesh, with a life like that.
I Am The Number 55
I am the number 55
Safe for others to trust
Not getting ahead or lagging behind in my speed and process
A good way from the beginning and
A good way from the end
I am silver dandelion fluff
Scattering seed
Remembering truth
Forgetting facts
And believing
For the first time
That there was
Good music in the 80's
*thank you to my daughter Hannah McConnell for this poignant capture...you are a photographer in the making.
