Control 60 or be controlled by it

Here’s the thing about 60: You control it, or it controls you.

That’s pretty much the consensus of my fellow members of the Oswego Catholic High School Class of 1971, who gathered in the city hard on Lake Ontario recently to collectively celebrate our 60th birthday.

I’m happy to report, on behalf of the OCHS Class of ‘71, that we are controlling 60 better than it is controlling us.

We’re not as we were when we were 18, certainly, but my sense is that, in the main, we’re healthy, active and engaged.

Sixty is tougher than 50 or 40.

At 40, we celebrated early-ish middle age, thinking that we haven’t even lived half our lives yet. Fifty might be argued as middle age since many regard 50 as the new 40. But at 60 there’s no pretense about middle age. We know there are fewer tomorrows than there are yesterdays.

The problem I have with 60 is the math, never one of my favorite classes at OCHS -- failing geometry as proof of that.

I do the math of how old I’ll be relative to certain events that I anticipate in the years ahead. (As a point of reference, check out Loudon Wainwright’s song “Doin’ the Math” from his “Strange Weirdos” album.)

I think about my daughter Elizabeth and my son David and the children I expect they’ll have someday and how old I’d be when they graduate college, or whether I’d even be alive to see them get married, or see their children.

They are the unknown x and y in the equations I try to solve from time to time.

Some people are spiritually prepared to die, to make that journey to whatever is on the other side. I tend to be a planner when I travel, so I'd like to see the itinerary of what that journey entails.

I’m enjoying 60. I’m retired enough to enjoy the time I have to myself, and I work enough to keep myself mentally and socially engaged. I’m physically active, have a loving wife, and I have easy access to a lot of family.

No, 60 isn’t middle age, but it’s not the beginning of the end either.

Three cheers for the old guy

I loved having the chance to cheer for the old guy -- Greg Norman -- during recent weekend coverage of the British Open golf tournament.

Frankly, he isn't that old -- 53, a middle ager -- but in the competitive world of mainstream professional sports that's old. Yet there he was, leading the four-day Open at Royal Birkdale in England on day one, leading on day two, and leading again after day three going into the Sunday final round. Ultimately, he lost it but he carried with him a bunch of wannabes like me with gray hair and bad backs and creaky knees. Win one for the geezers, we told him.

Greg Norman has been a professional golfer for 34 years. He was the Shark long before there was a Tiger. Norman was winning golf tournaments before Tiger Woods was showing his stuff on the Mike Douglas Show as a 2-year-old in 1978. Norman was the world's No. 1 ranked golfer for more years than anyone, eclipsed only by the recent No. 1 record of Tiger Woods.

What I liked about the golf at Royal Birkdale was that it was miserable -- it was cold, it was rainy, and on Saturday and Sunday it was windy ... very, very windy. It made the professional golfers very human. They missed fairways. They missed greens. They missed putts. It was just like the down-to-earth golf that most of us very amateur amateurs play.

But Norman's experience -- the been here, done this experience -- was evident. He's played in countless miserable conditions in Great Britain over the years. He had the same 30 mile an hour cross winds to contend with as anyone else, but he found better ways, better shots to deal with it and as a result he was a two stroke leader going into the Sunday final round.

I've always considered golf as a metaphor for life. It has its ups and downs. Like good days and bad days, you have good holes and bad holes. On one hole you can breeze along as if the game was as easy as riding a bike. Then the next hole it becomes a disaster, every shot a painful stroke of futility. Learning how to cope with the twists and turns of the game is the real challenge. And the experience that comes with age helps some cope better than others.

That's what I was thinking as I watched Norman's first three rounds on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Norman used his wisdom of years to cope.

On Sunday, however, the magic of the moment, the possibility that Norman would become the oldest man to ever win a championship tournament poofed. It seemed a previous incarnation of Norman showed up to play on Sunday, the one who in his prime coughed up leads during the final round. His most spectacular was the 1996 Masters when he had a six stroke lead on Sunday, only to squander the round and lose by five strokes to Nick Faldo. Old tendencies die hard, I guess.

As it was, he finished the British Open tied for third, six strokes behind winner Padraig Harrington.

Even in losing, you have to admire Norman: Owner of a successful vineyard, married to former tennis superstar Chris Evert, architect of golf courses all over the world. He's a part-time golfer who almost wrote history. We should all be so lucky in retirement to have the wisdom of experience account for something great.

Can we slow it down just a bit?

What is it about growing older that time seems to speed up just when we want it to slow down?

I got to thinking about this the other morning with the arrival of spring. Its arrival brings on a parade of important birthdays -- my wife's, my daughter's, my son's and my own.

It's the fact that my daughter Elizabeth is going to be 24 and son David is going to be 21 that is freaking me out. (And I'm not going to even try to venture into my mental state over the fact that I'll be 55, and I'll stay away from public discussion of Jane's age to maintain peace and tranquility at home.)

When the kids were little, time took its time, it seemed. Yes, they had their birthdays and their First Communions and their first days of school, and life as a young parent had a certain, predictable rhythm. For the longest time they seemed forever locked in as just being little kids.

And every morning for what seemed years on end I could wake up and look myself in the mirror and look into a face that wasn't any older than, say, 30 … 35 at the oldest.

There was Little League to look forward to and gymnastics camp and all those things they needed from you because you were the parent and they were the kids.

But then they weren't little kids anymore, and I'm thinking it started when they learned to drive. I remember it being weird at the time that my babies were actually allowed to drive a car. It didn't matter that by virtue of their birth dates they were 16 and therefore allowed by law to begin driving. But they were still my babies and babies aren't allowed to drive.

And they weren't around as much. And they were around even less as they became high school upperclassmen. And they were around even less when they packed off to college.

It's as if the distance of having the children around less often has created some inverse refraction of time. The kids move away, and time seems to shorten.

I'm not the 30 year old in the mirror anymore: the gray will attest to that, and so will the wear lines under the eyes and the folds under the chin and the creakiness of getting out of bed in the morning. It's tough on the psyche to look yourself in that mirror and acknowledge you're the parent of two adult kids.

My daughter Elizabeth will mark her 24th birthday in late April, just shy of her completion of her doctoral graduate work in physical therapy. It's amazing to still think of her as a kid when at 24 I was already two years into a job as a newspaper reporter.

My son David birthday marks his being 21 -- an adult in every way, shape and form. And yet he's the Little Leaguer I want to play catch with now that winter has given way to spring.

Make no mistake -- it's great having adult children. We really enjoy each other's company when we can span time and distance to do it. I just wish the time part of it wasn't speeding by me as quickly as it is.