Five

It's hard to believe that I only have five months left in my 50s. In March, I'll officially be a senior citizen in the eyes of the Canadian government.

DW will sometimes tell me that I can still act like I'm five, but that's usually when I tell her that she's not the boss of me.

As I approach my 60s, I've started thinking about how I'm not far away from the age that my dad was when he died. Thinking like that weighs heavy on a person and I've started thinking about all the things I've wanted to do, and how I should do them as soon as possible because I don't know how much time I have left.

Over the weekend, my mom gave me a couple more years.

As I've been filling out missing gaps in my Ancestry family tree, I've always thought that my dad was born in 1939, making him 62 when he suffered his fatal heart attack. But my mother corrected me: he was born in 1937.

She knows this because a) she's smart and hasn't lost her marbles yet, and b) because she is five years younger than him. I've updated his details on Ancestry.

My goal, over the past couple of years, has been to outlive my dad's age when he died. I thought I only had to hold out three more years but I guess I now have to hang on for another five.

And speaking of all these fives, here's a picture of me when I was that age, with some AI manipulation.

I'm using it as my profile picture on Mastodon and Threads from now until my 60th birthday. DW may still say that I sometimes act like a kid, and now I can look back on what I looked like when I really was one.

Happy Thursday!