Refflections on Life

Reflections on Life
 

My husband turned sixty-five today. A milestone in his life, a shock to both of us. Just yesterday we were teenagers standing in front of the judge in Elkton, Marlyland, having eloped in a misguided atttempt to avoid family problems. At eighteen, I was pregnant with our first child, just graduated from High Schoool when news of our elopement would have caused me to be expelled.
By the time I was twenty-one, him twenty-three, we had four children, a new car , and owned our first home. Most of our friends were just graduating from college. By the time I was thirty, our brood had grown to six children and a wide assortment of animal life. Some were wanted, others were intruders.
We travelled the road through life with expectations, not always granted, but always anticipated. Our children were our life and as they grew to adulthood, another phase entered our lives. Grandchildren. The reward for the perilous job of raising their parents. How cool it was to give advice to our kids on how to raise theirs, based on our own mistakes –a “what not to do’ list. How nice to get a full night’s sleep with no crying babies, no night terrors from toddlers, no late night vigils waitng for teens to return safely.
At sixty-five, him, not me, we can enjoy a life of our own. We can sleep late, although he never does, but I am a night owl and love writing into the wee small hours of the morning. He is often rising soon after I have gone to sleep. How nice to have these choices.
This year is one to reflect upon, remembering the years gone by, bittersweet with losses, good times and bad, health crises, fears and hopes sometimes dashed. What dreams we shared in our youth! How outspoken we were on issues of politics and the world at large. We were the children of the sixties and we were going to change the world. Maybe we did just a bit; maybe not.
Life flows like a river from its source to its destination. Married for so many years has made us comfortable in own own skins, a good feeling. The tribulations of past years no longer matter. We have come to a time of understanding just a bit of what life is all about, although it was always there before us. The lessons were hard, joyous, terrifying, exciting, instructive; and in the end so apparent. Life is simply all about love.