Maybe I already have and don’t know it.Ĭaitlin Flanagan: I’ll tell you the secret of cancerĭon’t get me wrong: I’m feeling pretty upbeat about becoming what David Sedaris calls “officially old, the young part of old, but old, nevertheless.” Not in some sort of “active senior” way. How can all of the things that happened since that photograph was taken have occurred in one lifetime? How can people walk around holding this much of the past inside them? How do they possibly add in another two or even three decades of experience? I’m topped up! I’m going to have to start erasing the larger files.
World War II had ended less than 20 years earlier none of the men who flew planes into the World Trade Center had been born. When I stood on that dock, “man” hadn’t walked on the moon Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy were all alive. How can I be in a photograph from that long ago? The math makes sense, but my own life doesn’t. Because it is from another time it was taken more than half a century ago. There’s a reason the photograph looks like it’s from another time.
It looks like a snapshot of my own great-aunt. The photograph looks like something I would discover after many days on. When I look at the picture of that small child on her sturdy legs in the foggy past, I don’t feel any connection to her. I have a photograph of myself at age 3, standing on the docks of Cork Harbor, about to sail to New York. There’s no dithering yet-the senescence is almost undetectable.īut on the other hand, you have been on this Earth for a really, really long time. Sixty-year-olds still perform surgery on people who could choose other doctors. On the one hand, you’re still going to the gym and to dinner parties. Here’s what it feels like to turn 60: weird. Because if you play your cards right, it’s going to happen to you too.
I turn 60 today, and I feel vaguely embarrassed about it, like I’ve somehow let myself go, like I’ve been bingeing on decades and wound up in this unappealing condition.Ĭhances are, most of you haven’t crossed this border station yet, so you’d better listen up.
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