Birthday Part Two

As I noted in last Saturday’s column, this week has been my birthday week – the big 6-0! I didn’t want to tell you ahead of time that my family decided to surprise me with a visit to the most frequented vacation resort in the world, Walt Disney World. While I know Ashland is someplace special, I wanted to be cautious and not announce to the world that our house was going to be empty for nearly a week. However, arriving home late Thursday night, I realized that anyone trying to rob us would have been like Marv and Harry from “Home Alone,” slipping and sliding on the ice in our driveway.

Yes, my husband, three sons, daughter-in-law and the lovely Madelyn Simone spent six days with me in the land of Mickey. Technically, we were heading south to celebrate my birthday, but since Madelyn turns five this month, she told everyone she met that we were going to Disney for her birthday. Hot diggety dog!

WDW is an amazing destination and a well-oiled operation. In 2013, 18.6 million people visited the Magic Kingdom, and it felt like there were a million of those people there on Thursday. Yet here’s the irony. As we were leaving our hotel for the airport, Madelyn made her 200^th best friend of the trip. One of the adults traveling with her new friend was from Ashland, Ohio. She looked at me and said, “Are you Mrs. Shade? Is this the lovely Madelyn Simone?” I won’t mention her name in case her driveway isn’t an ice skating rink like ours, but it sure is a small world.

Speaking of “It’s a Small World,” I’m glad that ride didn’t break down halfway through its voyage around the globe. I’d rather be stuck on the incline of Space Mountain, the roller coaster that operates in the dark, than to hear that song ten more times. The depictions of various cultures are fine, but the song gets on my nerves.

As for culture, the wonderful world of Disney has ingeniously enmeshed itself in our lives. We can sing all the songs, we identify with our favorite characters, and we’re anxious to stand in line to get a chipmunk, duck or mouse to sign an autograph book. The Disney brand has come a long way since Walt used to talk to us on Sunday nights at the beginning of “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.” He died before Disney World was completed, and I wonder what he’d think of his empire today. Maybe this: “I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.” How I wish I’d bought a few shares of Disney stock back in the day.  

While at a Meet-the-Princesses Luncheon, we talked about Disney employment with our waiter and asked how the women get selected to be the princesses. His answer was classic even though probably scripted: “They’re either born into a royal family or they marry a prince.” While I can enjoy Madelyn’s princess costume and adorable curtsy, I want her to know that girls can dream of much more than life with a fairy tale prince. I want to remind her of Walt’s words: “The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique,” and “When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”

As in any large, crowded venue, we had some difficulty keeping track of each other, even with cell phones. But we discovered the secret: if we shouted out O-H, the rest of us would answer, I-0, along with fifty other people in the vicinity. Proud to be Buckeyes!  

Fortunately, our ability to navigate the huge property improved as the week progressed, and we survived tired feet, bumpy and grumpy moments, and even two lost cell phones. When we look back at the Disney pictures from 2015, most of all we'll remember a beaming little birthday girl nestled in the arms of Pooh and Piglet, Daisy and Donald, and Belle and Ariel, framed by Walt's own words: 'Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever."

At Sixty

When these words appear on the pages of the Ashland Times-Gazette, I will have less than forty-eight hours before I cross a major life threshold – turning sixty. There, I’ve said it in print so it has to be true – I’ve read it in the T-G.

How could I possibly be sixty? I don’t feel like I’ve lived that long, nor do I feel sixty, at least most days. Yet as a woman who will have lived in seven decades, two centuries, and even two millennia, I’m finally at that great divide. Yikes!

While I don’t qualify yet for Social Security, I will soon get my own Golden Buckeye Card that is issued automatically by the Ohio Department on Aging, qualifying me for discounts at 20,000 businesses state-wide. Their website assures me that as a Golden Buckeye I am not “defined by my age, but inspired by it, a respected and vital member of my community who continues to grow, thrive and contribute.” So glad for their affirmation and support!

The subject of my doctoral dissertation was vocational identity and direction for women clergy at midlife, and this milestone birthday bumps me out of that age category. My midlife days are coming to an end, if not already in my rear-view mirror. I’m even at the endpoint of what Sarah Pearlman calls late midlife astonishment. By fifty-five, I was pushing that limit, and now at sixty, I will clearly be in the period of life author Gail Sheehy describes as the passage where “time starts to pinch.”

Some of the metaphors for midlife I found helpful were an autumn gospel (Kathleen Fischer), discarding shells (Anne Morrow Lindbergh), and casting off old maps or shedding skin (Joyce Rupp). In comparison, am I facing a life marked by eternal winter as in “Frozen” or the “Chronicles of Narnia”? Will I still be able to bend down to pick up new shells on the beach? Do I have to spend my older years depending on a GPS instead of an actual map? Hopefully I can discover guiding metaphors for my sixties and beyond that won’t include wrinkled prunes or sagging body parts.

What I also discovered in my doctoral research was that women in different age groupings can be defined or described by terms that may feel more or less flattering. While I’m comfortable with words such as elder, grandmother, and wise woman, I’m not too sure about crone. Crone? Isn’t that an ugly, withered old woman? Yet Ann Kreilkamps redefines the word. “In ancient days,” she writes, “Crone meant Crown. Crone is the messenger, translator of life’s passages, midwife to Death, Birth and Rebirth. Crone is the stage at which what was formerly passionately and often painfully or violently expressed is now recollected in tranquility.”Maybe that description needs to wait until seventy.

In the literature on life passages is the category Erik Erikson outlined in his work on the stages of psychosocial development. He describes the task of generativity versus stagnation as the ability to create or nurture things that will outlast the individuals as they guide the next generation. In choosing generativity, we claim an optimism about humanity and find ways to contribute to the world around us. As Samuel Ullman suggests, “Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.” Fortunately, I’ve got until at least age sixty-five (or later) before I need to move fully into Erikson’s last developmental stage of ego integrity versus despair that hopefully results in wisdom rather than regret.

Let me put aside the psychological mumbo-jumbo and return to the landmark birthday. Will this be a traumatic crossing into a new decade of life? I don’t think so. There won’t be black balloons or “over the hill” hats or canes to mark the date, just precious time with family. Elder, wise woman, crone? I’ll face those titles in the days ahead, but for now, I’m satisfied with “Nana” as only the lovely Madelyn Simone can say it. Now just give me that Golden Buckeye discount card and I’ll be good to go.