One of the problems with retirement and aging is that time kind of all runs together. As the years roll by, memories start fraying.
I don’t have any problem remembering spectacularly momentous things, but Lordy, I have a problem remembering when things happen.
I’m not talking about minor things here. I’m talking about events we experience that change our lives. But sometimes I have trouble remembering even the year they occurred, let alone a date, month or even season. Why is that?
In the past my and Randy’s lives have been divided into befores and afters. Before we got married, or after we got married. Before, or after, Randy retired from the Air Force, before we moved to Missouri, or before we moved to Florida. Interestingly, each of those events occurred approximately 20ish years apart. We got married when I was 21, Randy retired in 1994 when I was 40, we moved to Missouri in 1998 (an anomaly), then we moved again, to Florida, in 2021. Almost everything else has to be remembered in the context of where we were living, or when it happened in relation to something else that happened.
Last year was my 50th high school class reunion. I can’t remember the year I graduated from college, though. I do remember it was the same year I broke my foot off (another story I should write for you sometime), because that happened the night of my very last final exam. I also remember it was the same year Randy and I spent two weeks at Bellows AFS on Oahu (after the dangling foot incident) as a celebration of my finally finishing college 20-some years after high school graduation. But unless I look it up, I am not sure exactly what year that happened. Sometime during the Folsom, CA years, because I slipped on the wet grass on the steep hill in front of that house returning from the neighbors.
I also can’t remember exactly what year Randy got out of the Air Force and we moved back to Wisconsin unless I look that up too. Heck, there are occasions when I think about how old I am and can’t exactly remember unless I think about the year I was born (which I do remember) and do the math using the current year. Is that a sign of aging or simple inattention?
I envy people who’ve been diligent about keeping diaries. Randy’s mom kept a travel diary. She was so faithful in recording when and where she and Randy’s dad traveled, and she wrote a bit about their day. Every day. When we bought Tilly (the travel trailer—in 2019 I think) I vowed to do that. It lasted about 4 days. I also tried it a few months ago when we went on our first cruise (I don’t remember the dates) and it lasted through the first day of a 4-day cruise.
Because we never had kids, we really didn’t know how old we were getting until we realized that kids of friends and family we knew as toddlers were already married and had toddlers (or teens!) of their own.
Since we’ve retired, time flies so much faster it’s harder than ever to keep up. I was poking around previous blog posts last week to see if I’d ever written about a particular subject and was surprised to see that my very first post was April 1 of last year. Which makes this post the One Year Anniversary Week Post of 68andcounting.com. If I had a huge readership I’d offer some sort of prize, like dedicating my first book to the first person who points out that they saw my Anniversary post and want to claim the prize. But I don’t, so, sorry. No prizes. Probably no first book either.
One year is a milestone of sorts for me though. As much as I’ve always said I wanted to write, that’s often been all talk and no action. I did have a blog for several years called Thinking 2 Steps Ahead, and I wrote regularly for it. That seems now like a different lifetime ago. I believe I have more regular readers now than I did then, but that’s not saying a lot. Almost all of you (I know who you are) faithfully read anything and everything I’ve ever written.
Life happens, whether we remember it or not. It’s good to mark the anniversaries and remember big events to put life in perspective. So Happy Anniversary to 68andcounting.com. Next week, I’ll complete that 68th year of mine and move on to the 69th. I can’t change the name of the blog because, well, it’s already established and paid for. And I anticipated that time marches on by using the “and counting” part of the domain name.
Thank you for being on this journey with me. We may have to remind each other of a few things along the way, but that’s ok. Collectively we ought to be able to remember everything that matters!
P.S. They say, “One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.” I can attest to that. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. Whether that’s age related or not, it is, indeed, a wonderful blessing.
Leave a Reply