I’m thinking about my birthday today, Bastille Day ( which was fairly appropriate since my birth name was Bovard).
And here’s your international history lesson for the day: Bastille Day, in France and its overseas départements and territories, holiday marking the anniversary of the fall on July 14, 1789, of the Bastille, in Paris (depicted above in a painting by Jean-Pierre Houel that appears on the National Endowment for the Humanities website). Originally built as a medieval fortress, the Bastille eventually came to be used as a state prison.
The Bovards I knew, who apparently hailed from Pennsylvania, were not especially French in philosophy, and I only learned about Bastille Day from my mother years later. In college I signed up for a French class, but since I had learned Spanish in Texas as a child, I reverted to thinking in Spanish and kept responding to French questions in that language.
This caused my French teacher to shake her head and cry, “Non! Non! Non!” Finally I took pity on her and said if she’d give me a passing grade I’d drop the class. We were both relieved. The result, of course, is that I am not fluent in any language other than American English.
Anyway, it is an amazing thing to be 79 years old. As is the case with most people, I never pictured myself at this age.
But I digress, as one is apt to do at any age. I’m working at finding something to enjoy every day.
I’m grateful for the sweet little dog hunting mice in the garden (but sorry she has to wear that awful cone).
I’m glad, as my cousin John remarked this morning, not to have awakened in a nursing home and hope I never do.
I’m glad to be able to walk downstairs to my office, upstairs to my bedroom, outside to my garage containing my car and my Kubota.
I’m glad to be relatively healthy, which is very healthy compared to some folks my age.
I’m delighted to have tomatoes as big around as my fist in the raised beds Jerry made for me, which also contain summer squash plants with leaves as big as a serving platter, prairie coneflower blooming, and columbine seed coming on so abundantly I’m taking bags of it to the local library to share with others.
I’m grateful for the friends I’ve loved and lost, and those who are still encouraging me.
Lest I grow wordy, here’s a wise quote on aging writers:
“Old age treats freelance writers pretty gently. There is no compulsory retirement at the office, and no athletic injuries signal that the game is over for good. Even with modern conditioning, a ballplayer can’t stretch his career much past forty, and at the same age an actress must yield the romantic lead to a younger woman. A writer’s fan base, unlike that of a rock star, is post-adolescent and relatively tolerant of time’s scars; it distressed me to read of some teenager who, subjected to the Rolling Stones’s halftime entertainment at a recent Super Bowl, wondered why that skinny old man (Mick Jagger) kept taking his shirt off and jumping around. . . . By and large, time moves with merciful slowness in the old-fashioned world of writing.” — John Updike, “The Writer in Winter,” 2006.
Linda M. Hasselstrom writes poetry and nonfiction and conducts writing retreats on her South Dakota ranch. Her 16th book is “Write Now, Here’s How – Insights from Six Decades of Writing.” You can reach her at Www.windbreakhouse.com or Facebook.com/Windbreakhouse