Becoming 60 - Part I

I read May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude recently - her journal from the years leading up to her 60th birthday. Published in 1973, it was full of angst caused by the recognition of the delta between what she wanted in life and reality. She wanted to be a poet but had become more successful as a writer of journals and memoirs - and not as well-known as a writer in either genre as she had envisioned.  Her personal life had not turned out well either; she found herself living alone and realizing that her relationships with people were best in short bursts rather than full-time living in close proximity….but also feeling profoundly lonely when there was no one to share something very good (or very bad) just as it happened to her. The version of the book I read was a paperback from the 70s and the glue cracked, releasing the pages as I read. It felt symbolic of the different way I feel as I approach 60.

Letting go of old angst left from career or personal relationships is very easy for me. It flutters away like the pages falling out of the book - not forgotten but simply a part of my history. There is less of it in my life than Sarton’s although it may be that my outlook on life has always been more positive than hers. The future has always looked full of fabulous opportunities and most of the time the present does too. It helps that I have a lot of family living --- and 40+ years of marriage and a child. Sharing joy somehow increases the highs; and maybe the lows never get quite as low in the environment I’ve helped created for myself and for them.

Sarton’s descriptions of the outdoors around her house in Nelson, NH were the parts of the book where I feel the most affinity with her: the beauty seen through a window, the cycles, the fight against animals eating the garden (she had wood chucks, I have deer), and enjoying cutting flowers to bring indoors.

Sarton would live more than 20 years after writing this book but there is a foreboding in this book that implies that she views the best of her life as ‘over.’ In contrast, I see 30 or 40 years of life ahead and the tenor of my life now most resembles that time in my 20s when I was making a lot of decisions about what I wanted to be. The interlocking components of life are shifting and, in some ways, the decisions are more my own than back when I needed to choose a career that I could enjoy and support my family. What a boon the advent of Coursera and the Internet Archive has been as I indulge interests that I’ve not had time in the past 40 years to pursue as often as I wanted.

I chose a September sunrise picture to illustrate this post because I perceive the future as bright as the morning’s east horizon.