Big Wheel Keeps on Turning

Seventy Thoughts on Turning Seventy

Several years ago, when I was saying good bye to a friend before embarking on a 2000 mile solo journey which would eventually end my forty year marriage, she said something to me in a moment of rare candor that I've never forgotten.

Alluding to an earlier time when she was divorced and I was still safely married she mused out loud: "It's like there is this big wheel of fortune that is spinning, and before, I was on the bottom and now things have reversed." I couldn't help but detect a bit of schadenfreude when she ended this reflection with, "And now you're on the bottom."

I never talked to that friend again. Mostly because I didn't know what I could say. She was right of course. Based on conventional measurements and expectations for women, I was losing my "top" position on the wheel by becoming single at 60-plus years of age after a long marriage with financial security, while she'd moved on up to that top rung, marrying a successful, devoted man.

But it also opened up questions about so many things -- not only about how the wheel of fortune is configured for women of my generation despite the influence of 1970's second wave feminism, in terms of seeing a husband as the standard bearer of a woman's status, but also in the ways in which women measure the worth of our own lives in relation to each other's.

My friend's comparison of our respective current marital statuses was not something new or surprising. She had just said the unspoken part our loud. I wonder now, if she even realized she had let her inner thoughts escape her lips.

That was almost a decade ago as I was creating a new life for myself in my sixties with a new identity and new work and new relationships in Santa Fe. By my mid sixties, I was at the "top" again, albeit, still unhusbanded. My life was exciting and generative and full. Covid changed all that. Not just for me but for all of us. The wheel was still spinning, though this time a bit off its axis.

Questions that should have been answered long ago like, who am I, and where do I belong and what is my purpose resurfaced with an urgency I don't know if I have the strength to confront. And I have been feeling very isolated and anxious, watching that wheel rev up its engine into overdrive, with no hint of where or when it may stop.

Last weekend, I was part of a 70th birthday celebration for an old friend. We spent Saturday afternoon having a cozy brunch. Five women who'd known each other since high school getting together for celebration and reflection. Three of us were divorced and on our own; two had been married to the same men for nearly five decades. We all had grown children and grandchildren ranging in age from infant to grad student. We were all retired from professional careers, all relatively healthy.

Despite our good fortune, we all confessed to feeling a creeping malaise. Seventy WAS different from other 'big" birthdays we'd lived through together. We were all trying to find our way into this new chapter of life making peace with aging, while being more aware than ever before of our mortality.

As we drank rose wine, smoked medical marijuana and savored rich chocolate cake, we relaxed into the moment and reveled in memories we'd shared as youth and caught each other up with new developments in our lives. I thought of my other friend and her image of our respective places on the wheel of fortune. And almost against my volition, I found myself pinning the five of us to the imaginary wheel in my mind and trying to ascertain whose lives were in ascendance and whose were in decline.

Suddenly I was back in high school and defining my worth by comparing myself to the "Pine Valley girls." My high school friends who let me be a part of their group. The ones who were financially secure. The ones with two parents and an intact families The ones with loving fathers The ones with adoring boyfriends. The ones with natural beauty. The ones who were "better" than me.

I had to pause and hit the reset button in my mind. This act of comparing was making it impossible for me to hear my friends’ reflections, see the sweep of their lives and their whole stories. By staying focused on myself and my self-doubts and insecurities, I was unable to empathize with their struggles with aging.

I almost missed the chance to have a cathartic and transformative experience.

By opening myself up to my friends' stories on their terms, I could begin to feel their emotions beat in my heart and without measuring their experiences against my own, I was able to find a deep connection to our shared womanhood, our humanness.

Here's the thing about being seventy. You know enough about physics to know that where you are positioned influences how you see "reality." You know that anything can happen in life at any given time. The wheel is constantly moving at its own pace, bringing its own triumphs and tragedies to us all. A sudden diagnosis. An injury. A windfall. A new romance. A child. A terrible inexorable loss.

You know it better than you did at any other time in your life.

There is so much to learn from others. These posts are offerings and invitations for you to share your questions, insights, reflections.