On Turning 80, and Being in Love

 On Turning 80, and Being in Love

by Thelma T. Reyna

 

 

We carry what we can, water carriers that we are, and leverage our octogenarian body, heart, and mind to be as impactful as we can be, to be relevant in this world…and yes, even to fall in love.

 

Only three percent of the world’s population (four percent in the U.S.) attains this milestone. On average, in a random roomful of 25 people, one is age 80. So we are rare birds. Most other mortals have departed that room, one by one, year by year, leaving us to wonder at times why we’ve been allowed to live this long.

 

I am the second eldest of nine siblings: seven brothers, one sister. Only the two youngest brothers, suffering chronic illness, still tread this earth with me. Their steps are numbered, as all our steps have always been, making each footfall even dearer now. For many years, I’ve lived in California 1,700 miles away, seeing my seminal Texas family once a year, defying distance to keep love and memories alive.

 

Eight decades of living gather the dust and glitter of memories simultaneously. My dust is the stage, curtain, and backdrop of Kingsville, my small, tumbledown hometown where few homes had green lawns but where  children could climb giant cottonwoods and oaks, play championship jacks and marbles in smooth dirt, run flag football at the elementary school down the street, and huddle at the brand-new Pizza Hut on 14^th Street till midnight. King High School, the lone granter of diplomas, gathered to its bosom the town’s entirety of adolescent Sturm und Drang; and-- through stellar, dedicated teachers—elevated us to better versions of ourselves. They were the glitter who helped us shine.

 

In 80 years I’ve had my fill of schools and books, first at a kindergarten desk where I learned English with the teacher’s ruler punishing mistakes. My home with nine children had no books, but schools and rules and library stacks whetted my appetite to

know. My life has centered on the written word: as an English teacher, author, editor, publisher, poet. Thousands of fellow travelers have walked these paths with me, students and colleagues, filling my life with their precious light. Enlightenment brightened with joy and love.

 

After 80 years, there is ample emptiness, spaces once filled with brothers, sister, mother, father, elders, other flesh and blood. These absences of loved ones sit clearest in ruminations, for losses hurt the hardest when the love’s been deep and strong. But so are my memories of them, of all the people whose humanity and kindness made even the angels sing. They reside eternally in my spirit’s core.

 

And now: about falling in love.

Two deeply wounded souls were adrift in grief, a widow and a widower who had each celebrated over 50 years of marriage shortly before their separate losses.  As friends, they turned to one another for consolation and support. Three years later, these octogenarians have fallen in love.

Who knew?

 

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