Forty-eight hours left to turn 62 years old.
I find it incredible to reach this age. I am what any young person would say: an old woman. But I arrive better, much better, than I did at 60, when I felt a little lost as if I had achieved nothing in life.
A few days ago I reread Elizabeth Bishop and came across this phrase that is almost my motto now. “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
Today I am almost 62 years old, I have no job and I am full, but full, of projects. It’s incredible how a woman can sit in front of the computer, in front of a window or in front of anything that makes sense to her, and invent millions of ways to inhabit the infinite number of years still to come.
I reach 62 without a garden and without a job.
Without a job means having lost the identity I believed I had all my life: that of a working woman. But now I dedicate myself to other things. I have made older women a cause, of course, just as menopause was at another time.
Yes, I miss my garden. Yes, I miss my job. But how different is the way of crossing this milestone.
I have a 34-year-old daughter. I think I finally stopped being a helicopter mom, because now she is the one who takes my hand to teach me things. And that makes me very happy.
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I have a husband who takes care of me. Of course, it’s his way of loving me: by caring.
I have friends, many friends, some of the best friends. Those with whom you don’t talk every day. There is only one with whom we share every step of our lives, she knows who she is. But I also have others: some with whom my body hurts from laughing so much.
I have a harbor in the harbor.
I try so hard, so hard, so hard to move my body. Once a week I go to Pilates. I don’t dare to buy a full month plan. I end up exhausted. I am the oldest, the most uncoordinated. All the things I always hated come together there. And yet, I keep going, because I laugh. I laugh at a body that has the obligation to build muscle, to have strength to maintain independence. I talk about that almost every day. Therefore, I cannot be inconsistent and not move.
I live in a house that is not my house. I left my house in December, but every day this one has something more that resembles a home of my own. The sun no longer falls harshly through my window. However, there is a tiny window that I see from my bed. Through it pass the sun and the rain.
I am gradually gaining strength, but much faster than I thought.
Elizabeth Bishop is right. Lost houses also appear in her poem. “I lost my mother’s watch. And, look!, the last, or second to last, of three beloved houses.” Sometimes I think that life, after 60, consists precisely of that: learning to say goodbye and, at the same time, continuing to arrive.
Forty-eight hours left to turn 62 years old.
And although I still miss my garden, my job, and the woman I was, I also quite like the woman who is arriving.
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