It is fifty days from my mother’s birthday to mine. This year feels different since this was the first of Mom’s birthdays that she is no longer with us, and this year I will turn sixty-five. Funny, but I don’t feel my age; I think of myself as about fifty-two. Maybe, on good mornings, fifty. Let’s call it that; so with fifty days to go to my birthday and feeling all of about fifty, I’ve decided to change a few things. I’m going with a “Fifties” theme this year. Cue Buddy Holly.

Fifty.

I can’t lose fifty pounds. I mean I can, but then my weight would be about what I weighed in high school when I was slightly more active and my body could digest Tupperware and be fine. So let’s try for some variation of fifty pounds to keep with this year’s magic number. Five pounds should do it. I re-joined the Y near my home, so I think for the next fifty days I’m going to get on the treadmill and walk for fifty minutes five days a week. If the Cartoon Network is available, I’ll stretch that out to fifty-five.

I’m going to write five pages a night on one or another book project I’ve got going—I really do have five files of work-in-progress here, but then I’ve had the same ones for going on five years now. Still, this next month and two thirds is different.

Damn right. High five.

Listen, like the rest of us, I know about time. I’ve read about it, watched it tick away, felt it creep up my spine and into my mind with new drips of hesitation and doubt. Geez I know about time, the way it tricked Bobbie into thinking she could get better, never knowing the addiction had already won, and the slight of hand it pulled with Letty, and Dave, and Cole, and others; tricked them all, so yeah, I know something about the passing of time. We all do, especially as we move through the years, and about how Mom and Dad made it to their nineties—no complaints there—but how Rachel didn’t make it out of her twenties. I’m sure I’ll be thinking a lot about time in the next fifty days, and about Mom and Dad as I hit the Medicare mark, and about Letty who died on my birthday, and about Michael who right now is exactly half my age yet when I was his age I felt like I had already lived several lifetimes. Honestly, I think I turned sixty-five when I was nineteen. Time, man. I can count on it to keep pace, not lose one fat second on my account. It doesn’t take a time out, doesn’t sit one out, doesn’t find any value at all in changing the pace. Yeah, we all know a little bit about time.

Fifty days. Forty-nine days and about seven hours actually. Fifty glasses of wine, fifty gummies, fifty mornings at the bay watching the sun crack the surface, fifty evenings at the river watching it take forever to fade. This year I’m going to make fifty phone calls and write fifty letters to old and new friends; I’m going to find fifty beautiful moments—one a day—and keep that habit going another fifty, then fifty more. That’s the thing about time; it can’t decide for me what I do with it, only when it will end.

And it will end.

So fifty songs that give me chills and fifty minutes spent each day finding just a little peace of mind.

Fifty is the fifth magical number in nuclear physics. It’s the Golden Anniversary. It’s half of whatever whole you fall into. Fifty is the traditional number of years for a jubilee. Fifty in both the Torah and the Bible is associated with the concepts of freedom and abundance.

There are fifty stars for the fifty states. It’s two bits. It’s just sitting out there as some sort of centennial half-way point.

In fifty days I’ll be ready to turn sixty-five and feel fifteen years younger than that. It was fifty years ago my life completely changed as a chasm fell between everything that was when I lived in New York and everything that would be when we moved to Virginia that June 18^th. I was terrified. I was just a few weeks short of fifteen, which is young at any age. But looking back now fifty years on, it seems to have turned out okay.

Seriously, what a time it turned out to be. For fifty days I’m going to remind myself I have a home and food, I was not born in a refugee camp in Somalia, was not born during a bombing campaign in the Middle East, was not born on the streets of just about any American city.

I’m going to remind myself of passion and hope, and that I still have the energy to climb mountains or simply just fall asleep. That I’m really good at. But for now, I’m going to keep moving, keep noticing the beauty and continue to look for the peace. I’m going to remember the grace I experienced being able to have the parents and siblings and friends I did for these years, I’m going to remember all of the love I had in my life from those who passed this past year, and I’m going to look forward to what happens next.

Time is persistent, yes. But how we measure it is completely up to us. Hell, they’ve already changed the calendar several times out of little more than convenience; I can do that too. For the next fifty days, I’m going to grow young again.