An Unavoidable Turning Point: Turning "Elderly"

in Hawaii, August this year

 

Just like that, I am turning 75 this month and now have the dubious right to join that group of people called “elderly" (my husband has been in it for five years). Having passed the life expectancy of females in the Philippines  (71.5), I am now on the way to reaching the life expectancy of a 75-year-old American woman (87). I thought the next turning point in my life would be when I turned 80. But I have found that life after 60 goes at a faster pace.

Five years ago, we shifted gears. My husband and I changed the way we traveled, opting for comfort above all else and slowing down in the process. I also began to write travel essays. In fact, I published a second travel book, Cruising Past 70. It’s Not Only About Outer Journeys…It’s Also About Inner Ones, featuring my favorite pieces at the time.

This new turning point comes with a more major set of changes. First, we will now hardly travel at all! Our annual winter stay in Mexico, from Dec. 9, 2023, to March 9, 2024, will be our last. We said goodbye to Mazatlán in 2022; we will bid Cancun goodbye in 2024. In fact, we are selling our car, and when we return in April there will be no more road trips. Life will be a far cry from RVing around the continent as we did from 2008 to 2016.

Travel will consist of flying to join special family events. We will celebrate Bill’s 80^th birthday in March at his daughter’s place in Denver, Colorado. We will also be in Honolulu in May 2024 when Bill’s first grandson marries his fiancée. It has become more normal for the family to visit us; the new sunroom/guest room we built has been put to good use.  

We also want to keep our tradition of celebrating each wedding anniversary at a treasured place. For our 16^th celebration, we will be in Leavenworth, Washington not only to visit a beloved granddaughter but also to relive the beginning of our love story with mutual friends from our time in Seattle. 

Next, since there will not be travel for travel’s sake, my writing will change. I will no longer contribute to TravelAwaits regularly. It has been bought by new owners and is changing its direction to publishing more travel news.  I will still be on their roster, and I may write when I have something to contribute.  

More importantly, my blog will transition to “Cruising Past Seventy: The Inner Journeys.” I will focus my thought pieces along the lines of my favorite themes: love and friendship, retirement and renewal, longevity and health, governance and management, and of course, travel and leisure.

In my second book, I wrote more travel essays, not travel diaries or travel guides as in my first, Carolina: Cruising to an American Dream. In this second book, I introduced “inner journeys, those that are not obvious.” But my new pieces will not only come from thoughts gathered from travels. This time I will write personal essays even from everyday experiences at home.

There was something about turning 70 that heightened my introspection then. But at 75 I am deeply drawn to even more, especially since changes are coming from conditions we can no longer ignore. These conditions were what prompted us to seize the opportunity to have our renewal of vows and second honeymoon on our 15^th wedding anniversary, instead of the usual 25th.  If we reach our 20^th, we’ll do it again. And, if still blessed, on the 25^th too!

I already have a lot to write about. It's been a charmed life of three quarters. But I am also in the midst of some of the hardest life lessons, those that I so fiercely resisted learning before because I thought I could totally escape them. Still, I can't help but think that learning them earlier might have drastically improved how I lived my life. Pardon me, but they may increasingly become the focus of my writings. I hope you will benefit from what I choose to share.

But we will begin slowly. For each of the next 12 weeks, I will feature an article from those travel essays (from a total of 74) that TravelAwaits published in the past four years. After I run through them, exciting new ones will come with titles like “How to Die Young as Late as Possible,” “Where, When, and How to Find Your Lifetime Partner,” or “Which Is More Important: Governance or Management?” 

Come along on these inner journeys with me. Let us continue this friendship we have just begun.

FOR THOSE ON MOBILE, THE SHARE BUTTONS APPEAR WHEN YOU CLICK WEB VERSION AT THE VERY END AFTER COMMENTS.

PREVIOUS POST 

My 8 Favorite Chinatowns in the World