How to mark my 70th year on earth?

The end of a beautiful birthday day!

Nine days ago, Ten days ago, no, Eleven days ago I turned 69. (I have begun this several times.) As my dad always loved to explain, I have now entered the next number year, my actual 70th year on earth! So I would like to mark this momentous year in some way. It began with celebrating with 3 of my 4 children, and 2 of my 4 grandchildren, which was amazing and hasn't happened for many years.

A couple of days ago Tim and I wrote down our goals for the next year. I am old enough to have enough experience of goal-setting to realise that you should set yourself smaller goals, achievable goals, so that you don't constantly sell yourself short, feel guilty and give up. 

 

My blog became 3 books!

I am no stranger to long-term goals, some achieved, many not. Yet. 

 In 2010 I kept a blogpost going for 365 days, a journal of learning to run in my beloved meadow (lifelong asthmatic) and a sort of self-portrait every day. I achieved that one, which was called Two Resolutions.

Beautiful architecture in Valencia

When we went traveling for 18 months in 2022 and 23, after selling our house in Massachusetts, I wrote a blog weekly, until its links on Tim's Facebook and my Instagram were shut down by a complaint. After this sad event, I still kept my usual diary, but no blog. Until now. I hope it doesn't get shut down again. I am not sure what I said, except that maybe someone objected to my telling of a moment of anger and disappointment in Spain because all the most beautiful buildings were originally built for the glory of god. (And yes, I am an anti-religious person, believing religion responsible for so much evil in the world: wars, violence against women, degradation of the environment etc.) 

Art from this week: Tree of life block-print

So, my new Two Resolutions are: To write a once-a-week blog, a sort of memoir, and to include my best art from that week. 

 I want to write this story because there are fewer years in front of me than behind me, and my life has been an interesting life, a big little life.  My own life, like no one else's.  I have lived such a lucky life, in reality. I have had my share of delight and grief, the same as anyone you get to know. I have felt myself unlucky many times, but with the broader viewpoint of older age, have realised there has probably been much more luck than unluck. Even though I live my life in a state of permanent potential outrage, being a conscious humanbeingwoman living in the 21st century, I still know and count my blessings. (And no, God didn't give them to me, you can just be blessed. Full stop.) 

 So here we go, with my earliest memory, for the memoir part. Our driveway had a wrought-iron gate on to the street, and I, being a curious almost-3-year-old, thought I could see better up and down the road if I stuck my head through the bars. When I grew tired of looking, I found I couldn't pull my head back out through the bars! After wriggling around for a while in this head-jail, I started to screech and stopped some cars, whose drivers came over to see if they could help. (This was a long time ago and small children played unsupervised much of the time.) My dad heard the screeching and the commotion from the now small crowd of helpful passers-by, and came over to resolve the problem, which he was generally good at. I think it was vaseline which finally did the trick of freeing me, although I believed for years the story my big brother told that my dad had just wrenched the bars apart with his brute strength.

Me and my dad.

That fits better with my childlike view of my dad as superman. My dad had enormous hands, I've never seen their like, and he could do such gentle things with them, like fix broken birds and other creatures I brought home when I was a little older.

My dad's hands, fixing a broken bird I brought home.

I can safely say that my life has progressed in a similar pattern to that wayward, inquisitive little girl's first remembered experience.