I am 60 Today

This is one of those BIG birthdays.

Sixty.

I won't have much to say about it, but I'll see if I can do some self-indulgent reflection before the cake. I went back and looked at what I wrote in this blog (actually the precursor of this blog) ten years ago, upon hitting the half-century mark. It was not a bad bit of reflecting. I'll confine myself here to comments on the intervening decade.

On a personal level, of course, the last decade has seen the intertwine of my life and Diane's. That has been wonderful and, although I seldom mention her in this blog (a bit of compartmentalization one can diagnose as one wishes), I am grateful to the fates or my own karma for our connection. She is at present  working on preparations for the party and the above mentioned cake.

There is birth family and chosen family. I am blessed with regard to both.

Over the decade since I turned 50 both my younger brother and my mother have passed away. Mark, who had struggled with depression for years, killed himself. Mom never recovered from the shock of that news, heading into her own downward spiral. These were of course great traumas for those of us who loved them both.

Mom did lead a full life, well into her 80s, and was living in at least semi-independent circumstances until very close to the end, which is some consolation. She avoided a situation (long term nursing home dependency) that she had long feared.

Professionally, a lot of water has gone under the metaphorical bridge in recent years, and I've become more confident over time that I am leaving a legacy. Heck, in this period someone created a Wikipedia article about me. It is but a "stub," but it is there!

I had an experience on twitter recently in which a denizen of that site asked me if I was the "real cc faille" or if I had simply stolen his identity. I assured him that I'm me. He wanted to know what I was doing tweeting about "irrelevancies." I'm not sure what he thinks my relevancies are, or what it is about ccfaille that, in his view, might make his identity worth stealing, but I didn't want to press.

My baby sister Beth (who wasn't born until LBJ was President, such a youngster she is) jumped into that brief exchange to inform this inquiring soul that her brother has been spouting irrelevancies for at least half a century so that is no evidence of inauthenticity involved! As I said, birth family is a blessing all its own....

That'll have to be enough indulgence until I turn 70.