Jaki Jean on Turning Sixty

March 11, 2014

So tomorrow, I turn sixty.

People ask me how I feel about turning sixty & I never have an answer.

I remember feeling excited when I turned sixteen because it meant that I could finally get my driver’s license.  Although it took three visits to the DMV – I sucked at left hand turns. 

I now am an expert at left hand turns.

When I turned twenty-one, I was not particularly excited.  After all, I turned 18 the year that Congress gave the vote to the young people they felt they needed to send to war & in Texas, 18 year olds could buy liquor.

Not to mention that I was married & preoccupied with the traumas afforded all who marry too young.  That, and planning a trip to Europe, occupied my thoughts.

The year I was to turn twenty nine, I wanted a final birthday party.  By that time, I was divorced & not convinced being thirty was a great experience.  I wanted a party with champagne & smoked oyster loaf & spiced shrimp & caviar & beef tender. 

Two of my friends planned a toga party, which I promptly nixed.

Instead, my friends Richard Pulley & Marguerite Kelly Pulley took me on a picnic.

First we visited the Houston Zoo, then we sat on the banks of Buffalo Bayou & consumed smoked oysters & caviar & champagne.  And excellent company.

I can’t remember how it happened but we discovered that I was not turning 29, but 28.

Maggie & Dick took it well.  After all, I was their adopted adult child & they were indulgent parents.

When I was twenty nine, that January I had my first son, Nicholas Jordan Ettinger Ravel.  

And then in March I threw myself a 30^th Birthday Bash.

My friends from the inner city of Houston rented a van & came out to Jack & Jean’s house.  There were presents for me, more presents for baby Nicholas, lot’s of champagne & great food.

Thirty five was difficult for me.  Nicholas & I were living in Washington, D.C., not a user friendly town for single parents.  Our roommate tried to kill herself.  My boss’s fiancé confronted me, convinced that I was in love with him.  It was the most surreal, & the worst time of my life.

And then I came back to a kinder & gentler nation.  I came home to Texas.

And in the June of my thirty-sixth year, Samuel Jean Ettinger was born.  And when he came forth & did not cry, I was worried.  But then the nurses gave him to me & he began to make songs of joy & wonder.  My mother Jean & I were amazed.

Forty came & went – I returned to the University of Houston.  To get my degree & teach.  There I discovered so many women writers, literary theory, feminist literary theory.  It was an incredible surge for me.

Although there was that forty year old celebration at work.

When I turned forty, my boss & coworkers decorated my office with condoms & pictures of naked men.  An obscene phone call was also arranged.  I should have expected this. 

During my first weeks at the firm, the firm celebrated a birthday over a penis cake.

For my fiftieth birthday, my friend Catherine Ledkins Eisele booked a girl’s weekend at one of her family’s beach houses.  It was a small group, but four of my favorite women:  Catherine, Anna Bechtol, Darlene Deatley Kaiser & Kelly Jean Beard (who was a surprise arrival.)

There was even a parade, which Catherine claimed was for me but it was an early St. Patrick’s parade in Surfside, Texas.

It was a fabulous celebration.

And now, tomorrow, I will turn sixty.  At times, the thought blows my mind.  I have lived for six decades on this planet, in this country, in this world.

It has been an amazing journey.  But for me, it is not over.

In so many ways, on so many levels, it is just beginning.