Double Nickels

I suppose it is different for everyone—that age where mortality is a thing, and someday is here whether or not our grand plans tagged along.

For my husband, sixty hit hard. It did not help being a Covid birthday lacking any fanfare, which incidentally suited him just fine. Yet it was too much time for reflection with no party. He came out of it disheveled and dreamy, talking about retiring on the Amalfi Coast, with our Old World home overlooking a small town in the foreground of the great Mediterranean, full of seaside breeze and the lazy sound of bees.

I worry about him being five years ahead of me, not just chronologically but also in this next epoch of our marriage. He will have to be patient, because I am firmly fixed in the current epoch, not ready to transition. Yet all around me, change is threatening. Not only is my husband contemplative, but my children talk about moving on with their emerging lives, and my old dog is in perpetual hospice. I cannot hang on; I can only savor the seaside breeze and the lazy sound of bees in my own backyard.