Why the Seventh Decade is So Great

Turning sixty was one of the best things that ever happened to me, or so I told the writer Regina Landor.

Landor’s Substack caught my attention as she documented her family’s front-row seat to Donald Trump’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, the agency where her Foreign-Service husband kept children from dying in places like Africa and Afghanistan.

It was another essay where Landor wrote about the prospect of turning sixty, which prompted me to leave my comment.

She replied right away wanting to know why I was so hung-go.

Well, Regina, here’s a for instance: As a single woman who believes in the power of coupledom, I can tell you that now, at age sixty-five, I am at last and perhaps for the first time ever, receiving attention from seemingly suitable single men.

And I am not talking about the dreaded dating apps. I’m talking about men whom I actually know and interact with, several of whom seem to be interested in spending time with me.

This is uncharted territory for me, and no, I am not interested in providing details, except to say that I have always been a person who never, ever, dated. Despite being considered an interesting person with good interpersonal skills and an often warm, funny, easy-going personality, I am a through-and-through introvert. Talking to people exhausts me—and apparently, you do have to talk to people in order to go on dates.

I’m not saying I don’t love people. I do, and I have the friends to prove it. It’s just that I never developed a taste for dating. I lack the stamina. (It was actually a miracle that I even found a man to love in my late thirties, and it was a second miracle that a different man, one who was endlessly-educated, warm, funny, and charming, asked me to marry him in my late forties.)

I said yes to that man, although it ultimately did not work out.

Regrets?

Not a one.

This is another gift of my seventh decade—the realization that I am a through-and-through optimist. Given a history of lifelong depression, this too, is a miracle.

Here’s another wonder of the seventh decade. Friendships. My relatively new pal Cindy is always poking fun at me because I’ll often start an anecdote with the phrase, “My friend…”

Cindy teases that I have friends everywhere. It’s true. Taiwan, England, Poland, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Madrid, San Diego, Boston, Colorado, Washington State, Mississippi, Brooklyn, East Eighty-Sixth Street, the Lower East Side, West End Avenue, Cambridge, Annapolis, Key West, Fairfax, Tennessee, Croatia, Canada, Provincetown, Warsaw. There’s a whole litany.

I am blessed.

In my seventh decade. I own the fact that I am dripping in people for whom there is mutual love and admiration. What more could a person want?

The irony is that I spent so many days, hours, weeks, months, years, and decades of my life feeling so horribly lonely.

Regina, I could write a book about how great post-mid-life is.