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In the past I've always seen birthdays as a positive thing, particularly after a serious round of heart problems in the early 2000's. After that, every year was a gift, always knowing what might have been. But this year is a milestone. Or, perhaps, a millstone.
Number 65.
It's always been a benchmark of sorts. Once upon a time, it was the retirement age. Now, thanks to the improved health of codgers like me, it's just one step forward to what is now the understood retirement age of 70. But I'm old school. And 65 just seems old.
I've thought about this over the past couple of weeks, and I think I've achieved a kind of rationalization in my attitude. Actually, I'm healthier now than I've ever been. I've shed the excess tonnage that did me so much harm over the years. I exercise regularly, walking 15 to 20 miles per week. My blood pressure is actually chronically low; my diabetes is under control without any use of insulin. My heart is in such good shape that my cardiologist has given up on stress testing. On the negative side of the ledger, my memory is slipping, muscles are stiff, and my balance is not good. I won't bore you with the other, more personal issues, but when I look at my Dad when he was this age, I'm in way better condition. And looking around at other men my age, I can see ways in that I'm better off than they. No competitiveness here.
It's been an interesting life, nonetheless -- medical issues aside. I was born in Paris, Tennessee at about 5-ish in the morning. I just realized that even though it's just after 11 pm here, according to my original time zone, I've already crossed the frontier. Damn. My Dad worked for our church, so we moved a lot. Tennessee, California, Kansas City, all before I started grade school. While we stayed in KC for my small-kid time, we still traveled to many places, as we followed Dad around to his various church camps during the summer. By the time I turned 10, I had already visited 17 states, and contracted the itchy foot syndrome that I still have today.
Memories from those years aren't contiguous anymore, just snippets of things, times, events. I remember vividly during October 1962 going to bed with both the radio and television left on. The Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war made little impression on me except to know that my parents were very worried during those 13 days. I remember how a distant country called Vietnam and the war going on there became a kind of episodic television show every night. I also remember when that war was brought home in a very personal way when my cousin Ray returned from that conflict missing part of his foot after stepping on a landmine. The Ray I knew before he went was not the Ray who came home.
The protest movement got my attention, as did the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There were race riots after Dr. King's murder and ceased to become distant events when the streets of Kansas City erupted in violence. But for most of my adolescence, Vietnam hovered over my life. I didn't understand the war, although I admired the soldiers who went. It wasn't until decades later that I learned how we had been lied to, and how tens of thousands of young lives were mortgaged on the morally bankrupt policies that drove our involvement.
I remember how relieved my mother was when, in the months before I turned 18, the draft was canceled and our involvement in the war was ended.
When I graduated high school in 1973, I really didn't know what to do with myself. My parents were adamant that I go to college, and I drifted into music out of nothing more imperative than the momentum of high school band and orchestra. I didn't do well. I discovered that I was more of a ear player, which rendered the vagaries of music theory consistently incomprehensible. I changed majors, changed schools -- twice -- but still couldn't find a niche. I know now that I was struggling with two learning disabilities, which meant that college at that moment was a colossal waste of time and money.
In 1977, I met The One, a raven-haired exotic beauty from Hawai'i who in a moment when reason apparently departed her, agreed to marry me. Those years were a succession of meandering as I struggled to find something -- anything -- that would generate an income. Finally, in the depths of the Carter economy when jobs of any kind were impossible to find, we decided that I should join the Navy. I needed to generate an income and medical care for my family. This decision was brought sharply into focus by the arrival of our son. That was an amazing moment. I remember holding that small, red-faced infant and seeing his eyes open up to inspect his father. It jolted me out of the miasma I had been drifting through, realizing that this little guy was totally dependent on me, and I had better start moving forward.
The Navy gave me structure and a succession of goals to meet and exceed. It also took me to places in the world that showed me that even in our poverty, we were way better off than about two-thirds of the rest of the world's population. It was a gift of perspective that even today keeps giving. Ten years and 24 countries later, I was a Chief Petty Officer and faced with another decision. My duties had kept me away from my wife and kids (four of them by then) and Cheryl made it clear that she wasn't about to tackle four bouts of adolescence by herself. I was facing a return to sea duty, so I walked away from the Navy and became a father again.
We moved to Columbia, Missouri where I attended the University of Missouri. But that impossible vagueness and those LD's made that effort way harder than I thought it should have been. After two years, I left school. What followed was a period of time where I really struggled with my sense of self. I was unable to land a job, and Cheryl was working way too much overtime to make up for my failures. I got hired by Caterpillar in a factory in nearby Boonville. I was so relieved to be finally making some money, although it wasn't much. But the benefits were excellent and it was a place of haven for the next eleven years.
But it was during that time that I really began to ask if this was all I would ever be. Factory work is honorable, don't get me wrong. But my tool skills and instincts were not very good, and it was clear that I was going nowhere. My interests lay in geopolitics and international relations, and what spare time I had was spent reading publications like "Foreign Policy." I was increasingly restless, and Cheryl suggested I take some classes, thinking that the classroom experience might do me some good. The few classes turned into a degree program and two years later, I graduated with a BA in Political Science, and even a decent 3.75 GPA. What had changed was that I finally found a focus and a path to what became my last career. It took a couple of years and a lot of travail, but I finally landed the job I had always wanted, the one I suspect I was always wired for, intelligence analysis.
The next twelve years restored me. I was finally able to look at myself in the mirror and be happy with what I saw. My only regret is that I didn't discover this path a couple of decades before.
We will celebrate 43 years of marriage in June, and our four kids are now adults, having blessed us with nine grandkids, and let me tell you, there's nothing better in the universe than grandkids. Once I retired from FBI, I followed Cheryl around while she did travel nursing, which took us to Colorado, Arizona, California, Colorado again, and now to Hawai'i. But we're not done yet.
Like most people my age, I look back over the decades and see all the mistakes I made, all the difficulties I caused my family, and experience that pang of regret, wishing I knew then what I know now. But I also look at the good things that happened. I married the one person on this planet I absolutely needed to have in my life. We love our kids, and the next generation they gave us. We don't take things as seriously now as we did back then, understanding that the world is going to unfold on it's own whether or not we are stressed over events in the news. We're not wealthy, and we will have to husband our retirement reserves carefully. But we are almost completely debt free, a condition that gives us many more options. We are both still able to work, although Cheryl is pretty much fed up with the Army bureaucracy. We take care of her mother, while we struggle with her dementia, frustration tempered by the very real possibility that that could be us in the not-too-distant future. We will be here in Hawai'i as long as mom needs us, and then we'll be on the road again. Where? Who knows? All we know is what we've known all along: The Adventure Continues.
This is a lot for a birthday post, and I'm sorry if you feel I've dumped on you. But I guess I had a lot of thoughts to put down. And what the heck -- you're all still on quarantine anyway, right? What else would you be doing now?
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