I TURNED 70 TODAY; AM I STILL HERE?

Darlings I am growing old; it's great that human beings don't mold.

I'm in the summer of a march into yet another decade of my life. I'm older but I'm happy to have come this far, alive and kicking.

I was born more than a few years ago, in a hospital building that is now vacant and waiting to be torn down to leave space for something else.

I was baptized in a church building that had been attended by generations of my family; it was razed in the 1950s and replaced with a new one.

I attended a grade school that is now closed for all seasons.

On my way home from that school every day, I window-shopped in a picturesque old downtown that now is mostly gone, a large part of it having been replaced by county buildings and parking lots.

I graduated from a classic high school building that was recently demolished. It is nothing now but a blank lot, and a new high school has been built on the other end of town.

My graduation ceremony was held in an attractive art deco theater in which my generation attended many Saturday movies; that theater was taken down to make way for an innocuous chain drug store.

I spent many a childhood Saturday morning in a reading room of a heritage building that was our public library; it has disappeared from the scene, too, in favor of a newer building.

All that makes me want to pinch myself to make sure I'M still here, and haven't been replaced to make room for something newer in the world!