To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven*
Celebrating 70 with princesstårta
This summer, on the 29th of June, l shared a Princesstårta with a few friends at our country house, thus observing and commemorating the last day of my seventh decade and officially turning 70. Four days later, I celebrated beginning a new season and the start of my eighth decade, together with a much larger group of friends at a big party at our summer house.
OK… so I am now 70 years old. There is no new age box for when you reach 70. The highest seems to be simply 65+ as if over 65 is just one big blur. What does that mean?
Originally, I hadn’t planned on doing anything special to mark my seventieth birthday. All I really wanted to do was hide and pretend it wasn’t happening and just go on from there. But I got talked into celebrating by my long-time friend and summer neighbor, Barbara Eveaus. She insisted I had to have a party and it would be a breeze because she would take care of planning everything for the party. LOL…you can not say that to a control freak like me. I am compelled to take care of that kind of thing. So… I gathered the long list of email addresses, I designed the invitation, I composed the overly wordy email message that sounded just like me, and then…I pressed send.
The invitation demanded that people not bring me a present. At 70 I do not need any more stuff! It suggested that folks bring food instead. And if they felt like it was necessary to bring something other than food, they should bring some kind of flowering plant which I could plant in my work-in-progress garden. After that I started calling around and asking small groups of friends not to come. Not because I didn’t want to see them but because I was freaked out about having a big party with so many people. (My husband was on the verge of a nervous breakdown about it) I suggested to those I called that we could meet later in the summer in a smaller group where we could actually talk.
The day arrived on a Saturday afternoon and brought thirty five people to our house, together with lots of food and desserts and drinks and flowering plants and laughter and music. The party tent my husband had bought to shield us from normal Swedish summer rainfall was needed to shelter guests from a blazing hot sun instead. After the first hour, when Barbara jumped in and took charge of organizing the food and the people, I actually was able to relax enough to enjoy the day. The weather was amazing – warm and sunny – as it has been this entire fabulous summer. Guests left messages for me on our easy-to-reach security cameras my husband had set up. They spoke glowing testimonials to me that left my face redder than sunburn. And lets not forget the guitar and tambourine music along with Yiddish songs sung by Moa that entertained us all. As the shadows lengthened and the afternoon came to an end with guests leaving, I was left with a quiet feeling of having been well celebrated. Barbara and her daughter Carly came by in the evening to help clean up party remnants and by the next day most of the house and yard had returned to normal. Some leftover desserts were in the fridge, waiting for me to finish them off.
And now its November. The autumn of the year is fast disappearing. And I feel like the winter of my life is starting – the final season. When I was a teenager I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I wanted the person in my body to be. I had a select group of role models upon whom I decided to model myself. And I succeeded. I became who I wanted me to be, at least on the outside, the me that people saw and interacted with. I moved away from home. I went to Art school. I found jobs and paid-work that satisfied my need to create. I collected a group of friends I felt comfortable with. I fell in love. I built a family. I had a kid. I made a life. And while that life took a few very unexpected turns it was still a life lived by the person I had chosen to be.
And now I am 70. My working life is over. My kid is grown and independent. My love has been my husband and life partner for over 30 years.
So I look at myself and ask, “Who am I now that I have turned 70?” My knees hurt both when walking and when being still. My hair still frizzes when its humid out. I have most of my teeth. The crinkles around my eyes that always appeared when I laughed no longer disappear when I stop laughing. I have a lot more inches around my waist than I used to but I am still tall. My arms and legs are still long though the flesh on them wobbles a lot more than when I was 30. And I definitely move a lot slower than I did back then.
But these are all external, physical attributes. As I did when I was a tall skinny gawk at 14 or at 15 or at 16, I am still thinking about who I want this me inside this body to be. The old role models that I formed myself on no longer fit. They have become well loved but dim and dusty memories now. Who are my role models now who will help me to decide who I am for this next season of my life?
On this blog I have written about my childhood and my youth (take a peek at the word cloud), about being 50, about being 60. I didn’t write much about turning 40 because I was too busy being a new mom but I wrote about that too. And now I am trying to figure out being 70. I probably have 10, maybe 15 years left. And I keep thinking of Pete Seeger’s song, as sung by The Byrds. I’m still searching for my purpose, in this next season of my life.
*”Turn! Turn! Turn!” is a song written by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s and first recorded in 1959. The lyrics – except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, and the final two lines – consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. Wikipedia
If you have managed to read all the way to the bottom of this post here is a video of The Byrds, the rock band from my youth, reminding me of my youth, singing Seeger’s song.
And here’s the lyrics, just in case you want them too.
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late
Ronald Pavellas
‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ by the Byrds was a favorite of mine in 1965 (when I was 28) and for many years after. I had just received my master’s degree and was about to enter the world of ambition and advancement. Here’s what happened:
Eighty-four years of living
Some of it hard
Some of it dangerous
Much loving
Much heartbreak
Much fear
Music
Marriage
Children
Schools
Jobs
Betrayals
Successes
Failures
Recoveries
Years fall into the abyss
Friends and family disappear
Leaving tearful memories
But new friends and family appear
I cherish them and every moment
As memories of the departed travel with me
Hilarie
Thank you for your words Ron, so succinctly summing up life.
Janet Suslick
I listened to the song “Turn, turn, turn” (both Pete Seeger’s version and The Byrd’s version) just the other day after hearing another song, “The Circle Game” by Joni Mitchell. She wrote “The Circle Game” in response to Neil Young’s song “Sugar Mountain”, which he wrote while still a teenager. According to her interpretation (I’ve heard others), Sugar Mountain is about growing up and being forced to leave childhood behind (“You can’t be 20 on Sugar Mountain.”).
“The Circle Game” made me think of Pete Seeger’s “Turn, turn, turn” (my Dad liked Pete Seeger). I figure Joni Mitchell was inspired by The Byrds’ version from 1965 when she wrote “The Circle Game”, another song on the theme of growing older and wiser.
The Circle Game
by Joni Mitchell (1966)
Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like when you’re older must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him take your time it won’t be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
Hilarie
Janet,
I love the Circle Game song. Pretty much all of that stuff from then.
Sven Lidbeck
Such is life!
Carolyn Jackson
So lovely, Hilarie. Thanks to you and your friends for all those lyrics that bring back so much. I am so glad you revived your blog; it sorta revives me as well.
Hilarie
Hi Carolyn,
I am glad I could revive you. When I hear to all those old rock favorites from the late 60s and the early 70s I think of how my folks, who I viewed as so old fashioned, must have felt when they heard a Frank Sinatra song being played back then. How did I get as old as my folks were back then?