“When I get older losing my hair,

Many years from now.

Will you still be sending me a Valentine

Birthday greetings bottle of wine…

 

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I’m sixty-four … ”

 

Well, it is finally happening. In a few days, I will be the age the Beatles sang about years ago. Man, it got here fast.

I remember hearing the song back then, and thinking it was fun and catchy, but the age they sung about was so far in the future. When I reached that place in my life, I thought, I would be old and that wasn‘t going to happen for a long time.

Now that it is about to arrive, my thinking is different. Aging does that for you. Every age 20- to 30-something person who is reading this, if they read newspapers, is laughing because they think they will be young forever. Ah, the naivety of youth.

Now everybody who is past 50 is laughing about those in their 20s who think aging won’t happen to them. One eye blink — that is all it takes and age 20 is age 40. Two blinks and you are 60. Am I right my people?

When Paul McCartney wrote the song, he was a kid about 15 or 16-years-old, so he probably felt that someone 64 was approaching the end of his or her usefulness, well, except for puttering around the house, just sliding gracefully toward the grave. Listen to some of his lyrics.

“I could be handy, mending a fuse

When your lights have gone.

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

Sunday morning go for a ride,

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,

Who could ask for more?”

Yep, that hits it on the head. Once you move passed the age of 60, you want nothing more than some yarn, a broken fuse to fix, a dependable car and a weedy garden. I mean who could ask for more. (It is ironic and sad that only two Beatles, Paul and Ringo, lived to see 64).

Fifty years later, I am betting Mr. McCartney’s thoughts have modified. Isn’t he still out there touring, making music? Apparently, his lights aren‘t gone yet. So, who is mending his fuses and weeding his garden? Probably some 20-year-old he hired to do it.

Of course, he wrote these lyrics too. “If I’d been out till quarter to three

Would you lock the door…” So, he thought maybe he’d be partying at 64. (I do admit that for several years, all I’ve wanted to be doing at quarter to three is sleeping.)

Now I am not saying I don’t enjoy the benefits that come with getting older and there are many. You know that old saying about getting older and wiser has a ring of truth to it. It is surprising the trip from youth to middle age to those older and wiser years felt like it took about 15 minutes. Not that it has not been fun. It has just been fast.

Considering how quickly the last 64 years passed, I’m wondering about the next 64 years. (Yes, I know that would make me 128-years-old, but humor me, OK.) If those years go as fast as the last 64, I better get busy living them as full out as I can. And it ain’t gonna be weeding gardens and knitting sweaters by the fire.

What are my plans for my golden years? I’m working on it. Tell you what, if you come on over with a birthday greeting and a bottle of wine before I lose my hair, we will discuss it while we listen to some Beatles’ music.

“Send me a postcard, drop me a line

Stating point of view

Indicate precisely what you mean to say

Yours sincerely, wasting away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form

Mine for evermore

Will you still need me, will you still feed me.

When I’m sixty-four.”

 

Nancy Blackmon is a former newspaper editor and a yoga teacher.