It’s November 5th and today is a mighty big day for me. It’s the day of my coming out, to borrow an expression from another context, the day I finally tell the truth. This time the real truth. As if anyone really cares, but it has always been huge for me, this lifelong age denier so here goes.

Today I am 60.

Some years ago, Maristella, Kelly, my mother and I were sitting around after dinner at the cottage, and someone posed the question, “How old are you? Not the birth certificate age, but how old do you really feel?” There was no hesitation in the responses along with explanations of the “why’ behind them. The ranges were from 15 to 29. As it turned out, my mother’s “real” age was younger than mine, which prompted much laughter among us as she pointed out “You’re younger than me!”

I’ve been spending time recently sorting through piles and piles of old photos in  shoe boxes, envelopes and acetate paged albums, scanning to digitize them, cropping and cataloguing. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I came upon a bunch of old pictures of me. Fading images from (way) back in the day. Around the time of my “real age”.

I decided it was time for new images to embrace my inner 60 and share here a proof page. To quote the Olivia Dukakis’ character in Tales of the City,

“This is what 60 looks like”…