Yesterday as I strolled the sparsely populated Latvian beach called Jurmula on a rainy Monday, a memory popped into my head of walks on the beach with my mother while visiting my parents in St. Pete Beach, Florida. It unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes. I missed her and how vibrantly alive she was then, in her 80s. She was still working as a travel agent which she began doing at age 60. My parents visited 87 different countries in their 60s, 70s and 80s.
They taught me the joys of travel and venturing out in the world. They and the friends they traveled with, made me feel endlessly young because as they kept traveling, I remained 30 years younger than them! But of course, the clock ticked onward, eventually making me the one who inspires the next generation who are 30 years younger than me.
Yesterday, thinking and feeling the memory of beach walking with my mom, I longed to stop the clock, which rolls on silently imperceptive, yet seemingly faster the older I get. I remember my grandparents the age I am now and wonder how I got to be 70 and, in a few weeks, 71. How did that happen? It seems like only yesterday, I was walking on another beach – in Greece – a month after my husband Christer died – thinking, “I was sure we would grow old together.” I was 59 then.
Chronological time keeps ticking away even though the internal image I have of myself remains somewhere in my 40s – the age of my Bulgarian travel partners this past month. I know more now, than I did in my 40s and I’m grateful for how much more there is for me to learn and discover. Stopping the clock, if I could, would also stop all those new possibilities from unfolding.
So, I let go of that longing as I continued my stroll and looked up at the sky just as the sun was breaking through the clouds and the Baltic Sea lit up with golden sparkles. I smiled and felt happy to be alive, walking alone on a beach in Latvia, knowing with 72 different countries experienced, I still have some ways to go.