She sits there thinking about all the choices she has made, the ones she can remember; of the missteps and the disastrous aftermath endured. Sixty-six years old! It sounded funny, odd, as if it were truly someone else. But, then again, that’s how she had been feeling in recent years … not at all the woman whom he had prided herself in being raised by hard-working, God-fearing Christians in the Baptist church. She had been back-sliding, but only this time at a rapid-fire pace, and she didn’t like it at all. A morning glance in the bathroom mirror often said enough. And now …. Her sixty-sixth birthday was here. Sixty-six years on earth, four children, one husband, if one could even call it that. The “husband”, such as it was, had gone west the same year their youngest offspring was born. So much for love, commitment, and the vows of fidelity. Oh, please! The rumors of hubby’s legendary womanizing ways pre-dated their official union. Marriage did not seem to slow him down either. Actually, truth be told, he had been with so many women, she remembered lying in the hospital bed with their first born and the mother to one of his many other “bastard” children in the next room, having just given birth to a child of her own – one of his! Foolishly, she had never remarried though there had been other loves.
Looking back, she had to shake her head in sheer amazement. How did she EVER make it through? And why did she have to be so stubborn and rebellious against her father’s warnings about this man who would become her cheating husband? Was it the need to escape home, or was it simply the fact that she had truly loved the rogue her brother-in-law had introduced her to? So many bad memories, broken promises, hurtful circumstances … Ending up a single parent raising three kids; having to give up the fourth child (the result of an on-on-off relationship years after the husband had left)! The money struggles to give the three children not only what they needed but what they wanted also. Sixty-six years - so full of strife and last-minute challenges. Oh, those challenges to make ends-meet …
She was honestly happy to be alive, to be able to say she had survived for sixty-six years, and the memories, those she could still easily grasp, they revealed more than the very real hardships faced. For, there had been joy and good times also. If only she could now, at this age, learn to focus on those times that had brought feelings of warmth, and even happiness. This would be the challenge of the sixty-sixth year: to let go of the NEGATIVITY and see it all in another, more positive light. Extremely hard work, but not an impossible thing to do … Was she ready to make all the changes necessary?
