All the Best

Ever notice what people write on your birthday cards? "Hope this is your best year yet." They've been wishing that for me ever since I can remember. But as I seem to keep getting older, I wonder? I recall Carl Jung fixed "mid-life crisis" at about 35, which makes me pretty darn old right now!

Someone said, "Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be. . ." But I have to wonder just what that "best" entails or if, perhaps, I've already experienced it?

When I was a child, my favorite present was always paper-dolls. Inbetween times, I cut people out of Sears-Roebuck catalogs, arranging them in families— father, mother, teen-agers, children. Then created plots as varied and limitless as my boundless imagination, with interactions and outcomes completely at my control. Surely such carefree days must have been the very best!

Then as a teenager, I began living out some of the intrigue that had only been fantasized earlier. Sweaty palms wiped on my blue-jeans, just in case he should reach over and hold my hand. Lips licked to glossy smoothness. Breath-mints sucked secretively. Heart pounding under the pastel cashmere. Would he kiss me goodnight? How could such drama be less than the best?

Queen-Anne's lace, seed-pearls, nosegays of rose-buds and baby's breath, nuts and mints, thickly iced 4-tier cake, strains of "Because" and "O Promise Me." Surely this vied for the best!

Bursting water, saddle-blocks, the lusty cry of that first baby; years later, a second; and then a third. Each equally as thrilling. No adequate words can describe. Without question, this must have been the best!

Watching precious toddlers' first steps— first words— first grade— first love— first year away at college. Impossible to choose which "first" could possibly encompass the best.

Empty nest— and now just with that øne who has shared many years, these memories sketched faintly in the background amid all the busyness and activity with family. Now "our time" has come. Won't this be the best?

And only guessing what is yet to come. Seeing many "maturians" (as Helen Hayes called the elderly), some who have passed one, two, or even three more decades than I, yet still active, eager, anticipating, enjoying. Could the best still be out there for them? For me?

If there is truth in Plato's sentiment that for one who isn't happy, he will find youth and age an equal burden, then perhaps the converse is also true: To one who is happy, he will find youth and age an equal joy.

Now with those birthdays racing toward me, from one year to the next, I think I'll just try to savor each day— each moment— recognizing that right now may be the very best— suspecting strongly that it is!