Three score and 10. Today’s the day.
I’ve long had trouble figuring out what Psalm 90:10 means: “Our days may come to 70 years, or 80, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” (NIV)
And here I am, living it. On this date in 1953, Bob and Jean’s baby boy took his first breath in a hospital in Aberdeen, Md. It was at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where my father was an Army private.
(And for those of you who haven’t heard the story, at the same facility nearly 16 months later, Dan and Shirley Shelt’s daughter Susan drew her first breath. Dan was also in the Army. Susan’s not her real first name; it’s Celia, after her aunt. If she hyphenated her last name, and used her real first name, she’d be Celia Susan Shelt-Schultz. If you say that three or four times, you can water your garden.)
Those first breaths started a streak that have continued through the intervening years. Every once in a while I take a particularly deep breath, just for reassurance. We can call it a systems check.
Psalm 90 is a psalm credited to Moses, he of the Ten Commandments and the parting of the Red Sea. The way I interpret verse 10 is that once you hit 70, your strength begins to ebb, but for some people, their strength endures until 80. Diabetic neuropathy has stopped me from playing basketball or standing for any length of time, but I can still walk and ride a bike and, you know, sit. I’m really good at sitting.
I’m planning to start drawing Social Security soon even as I continue to work. I’ll retire sometime in the not-too-distant future; if I don’t, the woman who I’m married to may whack me upside the head, just on general principles. She has plans, and she wants me around the house to facilitate them.
OK.
The teenage me put together a timetable many years ago. I would be 46 when 1999 became 2000. I would be 65, the traditional retirement age, in 2018. I would be 70 — the previously-mentioned three score and 10 — in 2023.
Today, that bus pulled into the station. I’ve arrived.
This day seemed so far in the distance to the boy who turned 16 in that magical year of 1969. I was going to save the world — quite literally — by entering the ministry. Instead, I was called to journalism. While I did have two pastorates in central Indiana, a mere eight years after I left small-town journalism (for good, I thought), I returned to it. In 2008, I wandered into the county seat of Wells County. In October of 2009, I found a place to live on Bluffton’s fashionable south side and we’ve been here ever since.
However, to paraphrase the 1982 song by The Clash, should we stay or should we go? Our son and our grandson need us; Susan’s already spending at least one night and often two nights a week up there.
Should I stay at the N-B on a part-time basis? Maybe. Maybe not. If we move, Bobby and Liam live on the far west side of Fort Wayne and it’s a 30-minute one-way drive between there and here. On the other hand, I love this community.
Decisions, decisions.
In the world of journalism, this column is considered a “thumb-sucker.” I am trying to figure out things for myself, and I’m thinking that maybe you’ll gain some insight into my life — and, by doing that, into your own.
So let’s get back to Moses. Moses had deliberately disobeyed God at one point during the exodus and therefore he would not set foot in the Promised Land. He was granted permission to go up Mount Nebo, but all he could do was look. “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants,’” God said. “‘I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.’”
I am aged. If my strength endures, I might have another 10 years. That would be good. Liam will be 12, Amy Jean will be 22, and Titus will be 24. Those three people, my grandchildren, will be interesting people at that time.
I truly hope I’m around to see all that. After all, Moses got a look at something important to him. For me, the maturing of my grandchildren will be what’s next. However, I want to avoid that “trouble and sorrow” prophecy from Psalm 90.
This doesn’t feel like a finish line.
daves@news-banner.com
