Becoming seventy

Seventy.

It approaches, indifferently. I approach it, differently. This one is different. Next Wednesday, March 6, I will become seventy years old. I need to say something about it, and that's a risky business. But it's my birthday, and I can try if I want to.

What a long, interesting, complicated aisle, coming forward from March 6, 1943. If I could return, and tell my grandmother, Susie, where I would wind up when I was seventy, she would say, "You're crazy as a loon, boy."

Approaching seventy feels like the aisle where it emerges from the seats and goes forward to an altar where the coronation will occur. That's where I am today. I'm not seventy yet. But from where I stand, I like the looks of it.

All the other landmark birthdays were grim labels, bitten off in two syllables. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty.

Now comes seventy. Three syllables, which come out like a sigh.

What a difference. Forty was a wake-up call. Fifty was to the AARP as Feb. 14 is to Hallmark. Then sixty. I remember sixty like it was yesterday. Sixty was a threat. A cool breath of mortality arrived on that day in light curlicues that tightened around my neck. Too late to plant a tree and expect to enjoy the shade.

The sixties now seem like a proving ground for seventy. Show that you can take this aging thing. Make it, and you will be rewarded with a nice ceremony, conferring the nobility of this age. Seventy.

I know already, approaching it, that next Wednesday I am not to look past seventy. Seventy is a day unto itself, to be breathed deeply in, celebrating not where I've been, or where I'm going, but where I am.