It was bound to happen.
I am vacillating between gratitude and shock. Gratitude that, unlike many, I have lived to see the day when the AARP invited me to join. Shock that I’m old enough for this. More gratitude.
Shock wins.
Have I opened the envelope? Well, no, no, I haven’t.
It took me awhile to even read the magazines but I’ve found a few interesting things in it. Sort of shocking to get that membership thing. I’m just a little bit ahead of you.
Got mine. Still haven’t opened it. They’ve been around for a while. I haven’t. They’ll wait.
footnoteMaven
I chuckled when the envelope arrived….Paul is 8 years old than me. He had been getting them for years…..tease him I did. It wasn’t so funny when I saw my name on the envelope. I took it over to the shredder to get rid of the evidence. I, like Paul, will remain in denial that I could possibly be older enuf for AARP.
The magazine is great and the discounts are too. The AARP discount at the wonderful Topaz Hotel in D.C. was more generous than AAA. It pays to grow old.
There is good news, Patti–you can safely ignore the first, oh, eleventy-two invitations they send you. The mailers will keep coming…and coming.
They have become like markers of the passage of seasons at our house…leaves fall, AARP mail arrives, snow flurries, AARP, budding flowers, AARP, long sunny days and AARP.
If they decide to charge us for all the mailers we failed to respond to, should we ever take them up on their membership offer, we will need a new mortgage on the house.
I’m grateful you are still here, Patti, and not dismayed in the least that AARP has an eye on your clock.
These sirens of the age of 50 call to us in mocking torment from the rocks of our own self-doubt of our mortality. How far may we flee from their awful seduction, into the whirlpool of denial and being lost from our own journey? So far that the course of all that we have learned and earned of our wisdom is lost.
My life partner left me recently, vowing not to be in my company at her 50th birthday, as she had for 11 years, as if this were the emblem of life lost, love never to be found again. I passed this mark myself these 8 years ago, glad to know that what life had taken away in years and tears, it might still return in the certainty of love and knowing that life was meant for more than longevity. Alas, that was not what she felt…
Embrace the accomplishment of this semicenntenial, which is more than we may presume to own, yet less than we may in the end really fill with living. You are more marvelous than you were, and the arc of your life is still in its ascension… fly forth into your fullness, sweet muse!
hey dear one, just dropping by…
wow, i love it that peeps are saying don’t worry you don’t have to open it, it is the gift that just keeps giving, or something of that sort. you’ll get it again next yr and the next…
geeze, speaking of discount/AARP kinda stuff. i was at some doc office the other day and checked retired (i am 39 and on SSDI, not retired in the “real sense), cuz i don’t work for pay, just for fun/sunshine and hope to get paid to have fun someday. so…i am sick of checking unemployed! so now i check retired. so a thought at the movie theatre came to mind, damn it i am retired. so i was like can i have a discount i am retired? to the movie staff. Jeff, who will get the letter next yr… is like chuckling, but most likely hoping i can charm them in getting a cut, cuz he’s the miser. didn’t get it.
i do not know how i will feel in about 10 years when i get mine. probably similiar things as you. and hoping by then i am out of “retirement”, working a steady gig. LOL.
off topic…edit as you wish, darling.
oh, patti, wanted to email you, but can’t get my email to work. my post on love the unloveable… omg, i can’t even begin to explain the soul changing insight i had/have in my reading the essay and THE RESPONSE i gave. apparently the unloveable person i talked alot about yes, was others… but the hardest person i have ever began to love was/is MYSELF. i am NOT jiving. the timing was critical and lifesaving. so if you are ever questioning contrversial writtings, like you might have had, or doing “questionable loving” follow your heart…. it has been years since you wrote that and it changed my on a level i didn’t know existed. karma, amy
just clicked on Your Aging process…1, your beautiful adorable daughters I SWEAR, are such cutie pies… they look just like you in many many of the photos. and i never really looked at your most up to date pic. like with the red specs… shaved head or not, you are very attractive and have a look on your face i admire, a look of trouble… what more can i say… need i ask, do your cute ones have that streak—too—-the i’m gonna cause trouble (for a good reason of course) streak……. later. im neglecting my page to keep up with yours. a
my dad refuses to use his senior discount even though he's a few years into being eligible for it.
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In 2005, Patti Digh started her blog, 37days, following the death of her stepfather who died just 37 days after being diagnosed with cancer. Six books about living mindfully followed. And there’s more to come.
