Lyfting Me Up

Well, if an 11,000-mile odyssey wasn’t enough excitement, how about arriving home and then leaving again five days later for another road trip—this one a modest eight-day drive to Southern California to celebrate our granddaughter Sofia’s seventh birthday.

We make this journey by car at least twice a year. First comes the twelve-hour stretch to Las Vegas, followed by the six-hour finale into Los Angeles. Along the way, we stay at our favorite little hotel near the ocean in Torrance. By now they know us not by name, but by Room 121—our regular home away from home.

Our son-in-law Patrick suggested we try a local breakfast spot called The Pan. He described it as “Pancake Heaven,” which sounded promising enough to us. Armed with a rollator and good intentions, we made the three-block stroll and arrived fifteen minutes before opening.

The young woman getting the restaurant ready took one look at us and invited us inside to wait. The breakfast was wonderful, but the real nourishment came from a simple comment she made after hearing  our “Sofia chatter” proudly about her birthday.

“I love little kids,” she said. “It’s strange—they spend their whole childhood trying to grow up, and once they do, they spend the rest of their lives trying to be kids again.”

I immediately told her, “That’s a blog-worthy comment.”

So here we are.

This year many of my peers are turning 77. My delightful Japanese friend Terri once explained that in Japan the milestone birthdays are 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99. Personally, I’m aiming confidently toward 88.

For the past seven years, Sofia has been one of life’s great blessings. She and her little brother Conor are what I call our “Bonus Round” grandkids. We never saw them coming, and now we can’t imagine life without them. They have added laughter, chaos, imagination, and joy to years that could have easily become too quiet.

Each birthday brings a new world of fascination. We’ve traveled through themes involving hippos, unicorns, alligators, and mermaids. This year the reigning obsession is “K-Pop Demon Hunters.” Mind you, Sofia has never actually seen the movie, but apparently its characters are playground royalty among seven-year-olds.

That’s the magic of childhood. At seven, you are free to drift between realities, choosing whichever one makes you smile that day.

By the time you are approaching 77, birthday themes become a little less imaginative and a little more practical:

“What I Survived Last Year.”

Still, perhaps the waitress was right. Maybe growing older is partly about rediscovering the freedom children possess naturally—the freedom to laugh easily, dream freely, and live for joy instead of deadlines.

If that’s true, then maybe aging well is not about becoming old gracefully.

Maybe it’s about becoming young again intelligently.

Onward and Upward,

Mark