I’m much too young to feel this damn old

That’s the title of my current favorite country song. Why? I reached the august age of sixty last week. Besides the inconcieveability factor of such a thing, I still visualize myself as thirty.

My wife took me to Chicago for the weekend of my birthday. We stayed in my favorite hotel (the Intercontinental on Michigan Avenue), friends from Indianapolis came up and joined us, and we went to the Vic to see Steve Earle and Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine. We did the galleries in River North on Saturday afternoon. We took the El to go to dinner. The whole weekend made me feel young again.

There’s been a sudden burst of energy regarding my physical condition. I bought a tape measure and took stock of the sorry sight of my gut. The measurement shocked me. I rejoined the Rec Center and have been swimming a half mile three times a week. I bought a weight bench and put it in the alcove in our bedroom. I’ve actually used it—frequently. My goal is to have a “six-pack” at sixty. (I'm not there yet.) Maybe I can market myself as Mike Six-pack.

Thanksgiving came and went. We drove to Indy and were hosted by my gracious sister and her husband, twenty-five in all. There was a bit of political tension because about half those in attendance are Republicans, and there was this Obama thing that had taken place a couple of weeks earlier.

On Saturday, they threw a party for my sixtieth birthday. It was eight days after the fact, and I tried to feel festive. It was sweet, and a little sad. I can’t help but obsess about the (maybe) two productive decades I have left. And why do they have to be in what looks like one of the most challenging periods in our history? Why couldn’t they have been easy sailing?

~