Today is my seventh-fifth birthday. It’s just another day. It’s just another year.  But somehow it feels different.   I’ve been around for three-quarters of a century—that’s a long time.

I’m lucky in so many ways.  I still have the love of my life with me.  I have great children and grandchildren and I’m happily employed.  Although I have a knee that is not my own, my health is excellent.  OK, last week, the eye doctor said my eyes are showing signs of aging.  But so is the rest of me.

Over the past year, I’ve come to see myself as an older person.   A 70-something reader once commented that life is a conveyor belt, and eventually we come to the end.  It seems closer now. 

The other day my former boss was in town and he dropped by my office.  He is twelve years younger than I am, but took early retirement four years ago.  When he asked “What’s new?” I told him that I was about to be seventy-five.

“That makes me happy,” he replied. “I wasn’t looking forward to being seventy-five, but when I see you, I know it’s going to be OK.”

It is.