Seventy-five

Today, I turned seventy-five.
You kidding?  I think you have the wrong man.  Seventy-five is an age for, for old people.  Not for me.  Who's seventy-five, or 75?  Eleanor Roosevelt.  Walt Whitman.  Miss Havisham.  The Pope.  Not me. 
I feel like someone has give me a coat that I didn't order and that is too big for me and told me to put it on.
"I don't want to put it on," I say.  "It doesn't fit."
"Put it on anyway.  You don't have a choice."
Ok.
I was talking about this to a friend yesterday.
"Jesus, I'll be seventy-five tomorrow!"
"Age is just a number," she said.
"Yes, and in my case, a big one."
That guy who jauntily walked down the streets of New York City in 1975, age 30, is now 75?  No—he's still the same guy.  Still filled with a sense of wonder at everything around him.  Depressed, yes, now, because of the maelstrom outside.  But that's not unique to me.  Mostly, getting up wide-eyed.  Sap flowing.  
Speaking of that.
Looking out my window in Maine I see an eighty-foot Eastern white pine not fifty yards away, partially shrouded in fog. ("Shrouded" perhaps a tad unfortunate choice of word.)  It's noble as any king or queen who ever lived—maybe more so.  Looming, with huge branches going in awkward directions for reasons I wish I knew.  Silent, uncomplaining, constant.  Ancient, witness to so many comings and goings of us pipsqueak humans.  Breathing, too, like me.  Useful, earning its keep, many times over.  Breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen.  I just read one large tree can supply a day's oxygen for up to four people.

Old tree, a lot older than me, let me look up to you.  Let's take a deep breath, both of us.  Still many things to do.