Any birthday ending in a zero is significant, but sixty feels especially so. Sixty - until ten years ago the official retirement age for women - is still the threshold age for many concessions, discounts and activities aimed at 'senior citizens'. And yes; that's now me: though I can scarcely believe it, I'm now a 'senior', entitled to all those things labelled 60+ I scarcely used to notice. It is, incredibly, a whole ten years since I became a Golden Girl - and now I'm a Diamond Dame!
Two of my friends gave me flowers for my birthday. One bouquet arrived in the post, in a very flat box. Its contents seemed even flatter: spindly stalks, topped with lifeless, droopy, crushed-looking goldenrod, stocks and Peruvian lilies. Oh no...!! I rushed them into some water, anxious about whether they had languished, waterless, for too long, before eventually consulting the accompanying booklet. This told me not to panic, as the flowers would 'perk up' or 'fluff up' after a few hours in water. And yes; miraculously, amazingly, they did! As I serenely arranged these revived, now blooming blooms, I reflected on how truly life-giving a small amount of water can be...
The other bouquet contained irises and golden roses, mixed with huge, pale chrysanthemums and creamy stocks. The wrapper called it Spring Awakening, though the flowers spoke more of summer. I pondered this whilst arranging them: summery blooms, called Spring Awakening, given - during winter - to a woman officially entering the autumn of her life! And I remembered a half-forgotten line by Albert Camus: Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
What can it mean to live, really live, this autumn time as a second spring? To live it as a spring awakening? To love, and make Love known, with the rich maturity of autumn and the open, ever-unfurling optimism of spring? To still be filled with hope and promise and new life; albeit in richer, deeper tones, which speak of letting go and dying - though in a way which also gloriously shouts out life...?
In its intense colour and vibrancy autumn speaks as powerfully of living as does spring... God willing, and enlivened by Christ, eternal Source of all life and hope and Love, may I too live this new decade as my autumn-spring awakening!
Thanks for this
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