Turning 70

Turning 70 

This morning, at 8:45 am, I slipped into the eighth decade of my life.  That is not a fact that makes me happy.  Grateful, yes, but happy, no.  I have turned 70 and that’s incredibly hard to say in public, let alone acknowledge to myself. 

I was born March 30, 1949 and on that day a star danced especially for me. From the beginning, I was positioned in a place of privilege.  Early on in life, I became aware that my whiteness, my maleness, my education and my financial comfort, to mention but a few, put me at an advantage in the world.  In these 70 years I didn’t die from an infectious disease, I didn’t die in a car accident and I didn’t die “suddenly” of some freak illness or a heart attack. How many I know who didn’t get out of their teens, their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s or 50’s, 60’s?  How grateful I am.

l look around and wonder how I got here, landed on some foreign shore that once seemed impossibly distant.  So now I have just crossed into a decade that, by most standards, defines me as “old.”  Despite the angst, turning 70 has been one of the easiest things I’ve ever done.  I simply showed up.  I drew breath, exercised, ate well, had a long and satisfying career and bam, here I am—a newly minted septuagenarian.

On this birthday, more than any other, I feel as if I’m standing on a mountain top, at whose foot the ocean of eternity is audibly rushing; below me, life moves on--life with its deserts and flower gardens, its sunny days and its stormy days, all spread out green, wild and beautiful.  Age is not measured by years.  Some people are born old and tired, while others of us are still going strong well past the cusp of youth and even middle age. Contrary to what some people say, seventy is not the new 50.  It’s 70!

I will heed Alexander Pope’s advice: “Pleas'd to look forward, pleas'd to look behind, and count each birthday with a grateful mind.

Ten years ago, at 60, I wrote that 60 was a good age, free of the ravages of old age.  It certainly was a decade where things were relatively tranquil.  I recently made a list to help me reflect on the notable things—both good and bad—that shaped my 60’s.

I have lost my mother and brother within three years of each other. I have financial security, good health and enough time to do the things that are still on my never-ending bucket list of life.  Both knees were replaced during this decade thus allowing me to resume hiking and walking.  Minus some parts, I’m still moving forward, intact.  I am grateful to live in a time when these things can be done.

I have learned a second language, did long term substitution jobs teaching it, spent two winters traveling in South America and eight winters living in Mexico City where I worked with two refugee centers and helped developed their libraries. Often, I lived solely in Spanish. There were challenges and triumphs.   

I’ve learned that the words “I love you” and “I’m sorry” can never be said enough, in whatever language. I made new friends around the globe, lost some as well and I have realized that those who left me were never friends to begin with. I have enriched friends and they enriched me.  

I’ve learned that listening to my heart is as important as listening to my head, because ignoring either leads to dangerous decision making. I’ve learned that questions are often more valuable than answers, and that when the questioning stops, life in some important measure ends, even though I’m still breathing.

I’ve learned to listen more and talk less. I’ve learned that life is basically less about having then about doing and being.  I’ve learned to listen to the different voices that guide me at this juncture of life, and I’ve learned that these deeper voices will sound like risk, surrender, trust, destiny and love.  I’ve learned to be kind, even to the most miserable person, because one never knows what one is going through at that moment.  I’ve learned that these voices of an intimate stranger that’s from somewhere else is the still, small voice of God that Elijah slowly learned to hear.

The second half of life asks us, and ultimately requires of us, relinquishment. Relinquishment of identification with property and role status. It is time to embrace inwardly confirmed values.  The second half of life presents us with the time and space for personal development. I am never going to have greater powers of choice. I am never going to possess more emotional resistance, more insight, into what works for me and what doesn’t.  Jung’s most compelling contribution was the idea of individuation--the lifelong project of becoming more clearly the whole person that God intended us to be.  This is the time to reexamine life and make necessary changes as well as experiencing the quiet joy of life in relationship to the soul.  

A closer-than-desired brush with death at 69 forced me to face my own mortality.  The outpouring of love around me allowed me to see the Incarnation of God in their compassion.  I learned to listen to the messages in my body, to slow down, to live in the precious moment of now.  I learned that to be is a blessing and that just to live is a holy act.  I am a better, happier and stronger man than I before the incident and more appreciative of every day.  Not a bad lesson to learn at the cusp of a new decade.

There is still much to do and achieve.  If the agenda of the first half of life is social, meeting the demands and expectations society asks of us--establishing friendships, finding one’s place in the world and establishing a career--then the questions of the second half of life are spiritual, addressing the larger issue of meaning.  Our belief system at this juncture of life is finally not a moral matter; it’s a mystical matter.

I’ll be 70 for a full year and in my seventies for a lengthy ten years.  That means I’ll have to adjust my expectations.  To know how to age well is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most challenging chapters in the great art of living.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve skied my last black diamond off the summit of Whiteface.  It’s doubtful that I’ll buy another necktie or suit. The long-ago bucket-list of hiking the Appalachian Trail no longer holds the same appeal it once did.

Even though my body has been betraying itself for some time, so have stamina, capacity and resilience. I can no longer multitask.  I need more time to do things, more time between everyday responsibilities and more time to recover.  It’s been a humbling experience.  I now have a front-row seat to the spectacle of my own deterioration.

Still, I’m grateful for so very much. I will be hopeful, cheerful and reverent. I will continue to blow out candles, play, nap, go to the gym, volunteer, and binge. I will continue to dream, dare, imagine, push my limits, wonder, forgive friends and do more than I think I can.  I’ve never given up, or used the word “can’t,” and I’m not going to begin now.  

At this point I’m perfectly comfortable walking in mystery and paradox. I will travel and Travel Big!  Not only will I continue living in Mexico, now’s the time for the Silk Route from Istanbul to Delhi, to travel from Johannesburg to Nairobi, and to enjoy longer cruises. Big Trips, multi days.  “Old men should be explorers” T. S. Elliot said, and I intend to follow his advice.

Most of all I will celebrate myself and express thanks to the God who has maintained me for all these years.  

This new decade of my life will hold interesting challenges, joys and sorrows.  I know the fragility ahead, but I also know that I am privileged to gain membership in the three score and ten club.

Happy birthday to me!

Dan Ladue

March 30, 2019

People Remembered: Margaret Ladue Kennedy

My Aunt Margaret was my father’s youngest sister.  Unlike my dad and his middle sister who started life on a farm in Beekmantown, Margaret’s memories only existed in the city of Plattsburgh.  Her reference points were quite different than that of her two other siblings. She was, to the month, exactly thirty years my senior. Had she lived, she’d have turned 100 on March 12, 2019.  She died young—younger then than her children and nephews are today.  She was only 67.

As a family, we did not seem to be as close to Margert and her husband, Jim, as we were with my dad’s middle sister, Catherine.  Their son, John, was an only child and I was often included in their family outings. None of that happened on the Kennedy side of the family.  We never spent holidays with them no did we do anything with them.  I’m sure my father had an intimate relationship with his sister, but my brother and I, and our mother, seemed to have a rather distant relationship with them.

My earliest memories of my aunt is of her sitting at the kitchen table in the back of the house.  She always seemed to be nursing a bottle of Topper beer and smoking a cigarette.  Did she do this every day?  I just don’t know.

What I do know is that the aunt I remember in the last decade of her life is one who’d been transformed.  I was still a new teacher when she had her hip replaced.  Surgery for that was still relatively new.  1974? The date seems right to me.  In my memory, she’d always led a very sedentary life—up to the point of surgery.  After weeks of physical therapy to gain back mobility, she just continued what she’d already started.  Gone was the sedentary aunt I knew.  She now swam, walked and exercised on a regular basis.  She lost weight; she gave up smoking and drinking and became a new woman.

Her husband, my Uncle Jim, retired and, like all Ladue’s before her, relocated to Florida for the winter months.  They’d leave early—long before Thanksgiving—but would return home by early March.  I never could figure that out.  But her birthday was mid-month and she told me several times that she liked being home to watch spring emerge.

In September of 1985, my parents were celebrating their 40^th wedding anniversary.  I’d planned a big party for them for the actual date of the anniversary.  I was on sabbatical studying at SUNY Albany.  Logistics were important.  My mom called to tell me that something had happened to Margaret that triggered a diagnosis of brain cancer.  The Prognosis was grim, and she was essentially given a death sentence.  For the moment, however, she was OK.  I got on the phone, called the relatives and a decision was made to move the date up a week, thus allowing her and my uncle to come while she was still in good health.

The following week a small miracle occurred.  She was offered a new protocol, some new treatment, that was still experimental.  She agreed to try the new drug; within in days she noticed a positive difference.  She’d bene returned to life.  She and my uncle were given the gift  of another winter in Florida, but by spring she began to fail again.

I graduated, Steve finished his semester at Laval University, we were homeless and could not get into our home until August, so we went to Europe for three months.  On a gorgeous summer’s day on an island in Greece, on a day when we’d rented motor scooters, my Aunt Margaret died.

We didn’t learn about this until we returned home.  My dad was devastated.  His youngest sister was dead at 67.

New York City. Circa 1960.

New York City.  Circa 1960.  A distant memory.  My mother wakes me at 11:00 pm.  I dress and she drives my father and me to the train station where we board the midnight train to Manhattan.  My father still works for the D & H so he knows everyone in the Pullman car.  We settle in.  And I sleep ‘til dawn when Dad wakes me.  We have arrived.

There is always a ritual to these arrivals.  We cross the street from Grand Central Station and have breakfast at Horn and Hardett’s.  I survey the food choices.  Too many!  I slip nickels and dimes into the automated food slots and out comes breakfast. 

We are in New York to visit my Aunt Sheila.  Somehow, probably by Subway, we get to Rego Park.  I do not know how long we stay.  It could only be for the weekend.  Aunt Sheila always has small bottles of Coke and serves delicious greasy bacon with eggs for breakfast.  Her home has a faint smell of camphor.  My bedroom is the room her son, my godfather, grew up in.  On the walls are photos from high school and the awards he was given.  I can always feel her pride.

In previous visits, my father had arranged tickets to see a live Radio broadcast.  I have a faint, dim remembrance of siting very close to the stage and being asked a question I could not answer.  We seemed to be in the front row.  Another time we were in the audience of a live taping of the Howdy Doodie show and yet again for some early TV variety show before the years when all of this was transported to Los Angeles.  It all seems so very long ago.

On our visits to the City, my Dad would bring me to Macy’s and let me ride the wooden escalators from street level to the top floor then down again.  Afterwards, we’d cross the street in eat at Tad’s Steak House.

In high school, my aunt gave me specific directions on how to get to and from Rego Park to the City on the Subway.  The only stipulation was that I be back in time for dinner.  I was 16, or younger, and alone in the City.  I’d play a game that gives me the shivers today, but probably established my fearlessness in travel.  I’d arrive at Grand Central, pick a metro line, select a station, ride to it, get out, walk around, then return to where I’d started.  I wandered around neighborhoods I probably should not have been in.  I was fearless, yet cautious, and somehow knew my limits.  I always got back to Grand Central and I made sure I never told anyone.

With my limited funds, I’d go to a Broadways ticket box office and buy a balcony or Standing Room only ticket.  For $5.00 I was seeing my first shows at Wednesday matinees.  (Just yesterday, I paid $108.00, 40% off, to see a show.  But maybe those $5.00 was equal to the $108.00 today.  Life’s changes.)  Sometimes I’d buy a ticket to Radio City Music Hall where I’d see a movie than a live Rockette’s show.  A long time ago in a very different New York.

Such beautiful memories.

Many years later, after my father’s death, I found myself in New York in early November.  I could feel my father’s presence.  I scrapped any plans I had and decided to make a pilgrimage to my father. I went to Macy’s, rode the escalators, had lunch at Tad’s, returned to Grand Central and paid homage to the ghost of the automat that had stood across the street. In the end, it was a happy visit.  New York, my Dad and me.   Then and now.

New York would dominate my urban life for years.  When I needed to be in a city, it was always New York to which I’d travel.  Expect for a brief period in the late 1970’s after I’d been mugged, I’d return often to “The City.”  Each March, somewhere around my birthday, I’d splurge on three theater tickets.  My birthday bash/theater binge.  I stopped doing that the year I drove through nightmarish snow to get home.

There are only glimpses of the New York I remember as a youngster and young man.  It is so much cleaner now.  42^nd Street is only a specter of the street I’d wander down as a young man.  Looking back on it, a teen ager should never have walked into the shops I’d investigate in those days.  Horn and Hardett’s is long gone.  Tad’s still has a presence but not in the low 30’s where my dad and I ate.  All the porn shops are shuttered.  In their place are restored theaters and trendy tourist shops.  It’s returned to the 42^nd Street of my parents’ generation and it’s all for the better.

I feel very old lately.  No longer young, on the cusp of old.  It’s a sobering feeling.  Looking at the hordes of young people who still gravitate to the City, I see myself.  It still lures people in and probably always will.

New York.  Seven decades of memories.

New York

In the End

Plattsburgh, New York

December 13, 2017

Latitude 44˚ 58’

In the end, I spent a month and one day on the road, tackling four countries in a way of travel I used to do but no longer do much of.  I flew, took trains and busses and felt as if it was 1985 all over again.

In the end, Latvia and Lithuania were two new countries added to the ongoing list of “countries visited.”  I would very much like to get to 100 by the time I turn 70. 

In the end, almost all of the trip was new, which is exactly what I wanted.  I’ve become far too comfortable in Mexico and it was time to break out of that rut.  I’ve heard far too many older people say how difficult it is to travel and I’m making this commitment now not to be one of them.

In the end, I glutted on Christmas markets and still did not have enough.  There is no end to them on this continent and I have no doubt I’ll do another trip of this sort.  I loved the short, cold and cloudy days and long dark nights.  I really never tired of living in shades or browns, grays and blacks.  There will be plenty of sun later on when I return to Mexico for the winter.

In the end, travel has changed—some ways for the good and some for the not so good.  I was able to stay in my own apartment and avoided hotels because of Airbnb.  That I liked.  A lot!  What I did not like was having to plan every element of this trip months in advance.  Because so many people are traveling these days it’s far more difficult to be serendipitous.

In the end, there are some definite perks to travel today that simply did not exist even a generation ago.  How nice to exit a train and not wait for a bus.  Uber at your service requires a Smartphone and a data plan, but it’s well worth it.

In the end, Airbnb put me in multiple apartments where I could prepare my own meals and not worry if the tenant next door is making too much noise in his hotel room.  Airbnb as allowed me to live in neighborhoods that were never available in the past.

In the end, I wonder if travel today hasn’t lost something in comparison to the past? Do we truly ever “get away?”  There were days I was in touch with people at home almost hourly, either via texts or FaceTime, Messenger or WhatsApp.  There was a day when I was 100% in France, or wherever, and there was minimal contact with home.  I don’t want to go back to that, but there was something nice about being fully present in the place you’re at.  That’s a bit lost these days.

In the end, I see why people take tours and cruises. They’re so much easier.  All one has to do is show up.  I’ve had to orient myself to 10 different locales is the past month.  It’s good for the brain, but at this point I’m ready to coast, go home and not have to do that again—for a while.

In the end, almost everything I did was new, which was what I wanted.  Outside of Paris, which might as well have been new considering how long it been since I’d been there last, every destination was a new experience.  I’ve missed that in travel and am glad I made this choice—a choice I’m going to make more often. 

In the end, I was so ready to fly home.  My body hurt in ways it never hurt before in traveling.  That, plus the facts that I was tired of the cold, tired of the cloudy days, tired of being alone.  It was just time.

In the end, the Little Engine did quite well.  I knew I could, I knew I could, I knew I could.”  But it was time to go home, and gladly so.  I took the wizard’s advice, clicked my heels three times and said, “Home.”  “Home”

“Home.”