Because I was born on Oct. 27, 1951, I have recently had a birthday that is seen by many as one of some import. I acknowledge this, while I also choose not to allow a word, seventy, to hold sway. These decade birthdays have become anxiety-producing mileposts imposed on us all by a society that devalues age.  ‘I’m 30! Egads! I have to be an adult!’ As if maturity could not be attained at 25 or 29, as if you will turn into a slug if you’re swimming in uncertainty at 31. ‘I’m 50 today and what have I done with my life?’ As if whatever you have accomplished up until that august age is somehow suspect. Am I a different person today than I was two weeks ago or will be three months from now? Clearly not. These birthdays are cultural constructs that benefit Hallmark and its ilk but not those of us heading ‘all downhill from here’ but still looking ‘not a day older’…

So I turn my thoughts down more productive avenues.

Years ago, I remember talking with an older woman who spoke of being ‘invisible’ now that she was aging, that younger people of all stripes and ages marginalized and, worse, ignored her – how it grieved her, how she wanted to say to them, ‘but I am here, and I’m well read, and I’m a spiritual person and I’m a wise woman, you can learn from me.’ Yet she did not feel most people heeded – or needed — her.

I take her point, I do. I understand that there is a fundamental human need to be seen, and in being seen, to be validated. But much as I respected this woman, at the time I remember thinking she was probably not on the most productive path toward elderhood. Now that I am there myself, I find I really haven’t changed my mind. It’s true that age brings with it a certain invisibility. I’ve noticed this most when I am among strangers whose passing glance tells me I am worth no more than that, really. But rather than find this upsetting, I actually find it rather liberating. I’m happy to no longer worry about how people see the outward me. Never a beauty, I don’t mourn the loss of my ‘looks,’ thank goodness. And I don’t really give a fig that some unknown person chooses to ignore me. When I see that glance fall off me, I find myself thinking more often than not, ‘Your turn will come, sucker!”

Age, actually, is much better if embraced to its fullest. This is an unfolding, and joyful, revelation to me. The fact of the matter is that I AM a wise(r) woman – or starting down that path – and people actually can learn life truths from me. Steeped into the ancient soul of Ireland is the story of ‘an Cailleach,’ (cahl-ee-ahck) the old woman or the hag. She appears in surviving texts as a sovereign goddess of the land, a giantess whose long strides take her across the length and breadth of Ireland, creating mountains and hills in her wake. She is known in the lore as a crone, a very old and apparently crusty woman who lives by herself in the craggy parts of the country. This is her time of year, starting with Samhain (sow-en) or Halloween, the time of the darkness and of the fallow that is winter. But come spring, the story goes, she is reborn as a maiden, soon becoming a mother of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren as she gradually transforms once again to the crone of winter. I love this story. An Cailleach is the embodiment of wisdom, of all that came before and all that is now. This strikes a deep chord within me. I am the 70-year-old Deborah, no lie, but I am also the sum of my parts, the unworthy child, the boy-crazy teenager, the lost 22-year-old, the mother, journalist, (briefly) wife, Unitarian, sister and daughter filled with angst and laughter and doubts. And in this is my wisdom. I am on the precipice of great insights as I come to more fully embrace my child, my maiden, my mother, my crone. Finally, this woman has something to impart. And if you choose not to plumb my wisdom, if you choose to make me invisible, you are the one who is diminished, not me.

There will be time enough for decrepitude, which will inevitably, slowly come – eyesight, hearing, creeping ailments. I know they’re in my future. Even now, I forget names and places, forget why I’ve entered a room when I know it’s for a purpose, forget what I wanted to look up on the internet the moment I go to my cell phone and am sidetracked. It rankles. The wrinkles on my face I put there purposefully with my lifelong love of the sun, and I wear them ungrudgingly. The wrinkles on my arms and belly less so. But I understand them, understand that I am not physically who I was at even 63, let alone 39. I accept my gray hair, do not cover it up with a color of a younger woman I no longer am (well, except maybe for a few darker highlights a couple of times a year; but even that measly measure I am poised to abandon). The body and mind are beginning to break down, no lie, but my work is to accept this graciously.

And I think it can be done. I was 43 when I first watched ‘The Lion King’ with my then 4-year-old daughter. That archetypal imagery of the circle of life, as beautifully rendered in the central song of that film, was potent to me then and has remained no less potent in all the years since. The circle has become a totem of sorts for me, a mantra, a way for me to understand and accept aging and death and birth and regeneration. I have often told someone grieving the loss of a loved one, ‘the moment she died, a baby was born. Take heart in that.’ And I do take heart. This is the way of things. We are born, we live our lives and we die. It’s inevitable, and it’s very comforting for me to view mortality through this prism. The older I get, the more comforted I am. Perhaps I will fear the deterioration of my body some future day. Perhaps it will be on a summer evening in my 78^th year when I feel suddenly diminished, perhaps on a snowy January morning when I am 83. Or perhaps that day will not come at all, and I will glide out with my wits and body still about me. The mysteries in store for me abound.

I am going to end this with one last mantra. If you know me, you have probably heard me say more than once, “Ob-la-de, ob-la-da.” It means, what can do? It means, you can’t make this stuff up. It means, let’s find a place to put it. It means, can you believe it? It means, as Desmond and Molly Jones well know, life in all its messiness and glory goes on. And so it does. And how cool is that?