Feisty Mellow
I never really thought about the possibility of being 60. I mean, who gets up in the morning and says, “When I am 60 . . ." No one. I kind of thought about 50, but not 60. It is as if my brain went into neutral the day I turned 50. For ten years if someone asked me how old I was (why they would dare to do this, I am not sure), I would say the wrong age—and Scott would correct me—thank you so much dear. Then suddenly, it was looming closer . . . 55, 56, 57, 58; and that is when I decided that if I was going to be 60 (it appeared that I had no choice), it had to look completely different from 58. I had lost quite a bit of weight, but this was getting serious now.
With a LOT of help from a friend, I completely transformed myself (inside and out) during those last two years. Why? It was because I wanted 60 to be a beginning and not an ending. If I could transform myself, then I could believe that anything was possible. I did and it is.
I am not the only one who recently faced 60. We are mostly grandmothers, but none of us fit the grandmother image of our childhood. About ten years ago, the generation just ahead of us began to change the image and the rocking chairs began to disappear—unless it was in the nursery of a grandchild!
As I was researching blogs (for women especially), I found most bloggers are between the ages of 25 and 45. Wonderful! We need those voices. We also need the voice of the “older woman” of Titus 2? I really could barely write that “older” word, but we have to remember that with age comes wisdom and that was the important point in that verse. It is important for my generation to have something to say to the generations following us. They are listening. However, I also wanted to include a space for those of us who listened to the Beatles on record players. This is it.
I thought for a long time about what to call this space. I thought about things that are said to be better with age—there are pages and pages of blogs on that topic—no need to go there, it has all been said. Every list I viewed included wine and cheese and the word mellow fits both of them and hopefully me.
Mellow: made gentle and compassionate by age or maturity; softened.
We all hope that this description is true as we “mature” but no one would think that this fully describes me. Maybe . . .
Feisty: full of animation, energy, or courage; spirited; spunky, plucky.
Yep. I may be maturing, but I am still Janyne. Feisty Mellow it is. It fits me and it fits my friends. This is the place where I will share some memories and the adventures of my generation launching into “the final (?) frontier.” We are not ready to sit around and discuss our operations yet. Let’s go!
(BTW: Fellow Baby Boomers, there was a song we sang as teens. I know you were thinking of it when you saw mellow. I am moving the word mellow past that song. Most of the time we did not know what we were singing. Just saying.)