So here is my follow-up to Tuesday’s birthday post. It turns out that March 26 was a most perfectly beautiful spring day here in Wake Forest. My birthday was all sunshine, blue skies, cool temperatures, and trees busting out in color.

Yesterday I focused on the gift of love and passion for life (#Hug-a-Day). Today I’m interested in the actual fact of being sixty-three years of age.

First off let it be known that if I were a British car, born in 1956, I would be an Austin Healey. The one in this picture has aged rather well – and I’d like to think that I have too!

Vintage 1956:

Other than the drama of my birth (four weeks late) in a chaotic upstairs bedroom on Dolphins Road in Folkestone, the year I was born included these other news items.

• The Suez Crisis,
• Federal-Aid Highway Act signed for the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways,
• Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president – and Sir Anthony Eden was Prime Minister in the U.K.
• Fidel Castro landed in Cuba at the start of the Cuban Revolution,
• The H-Bomb was tested at Bikini Atoll
• Elvis Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and entered the music charts with “Heartbreak Hotel.”
• “My Fair Lady” opened on Broadway starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison,
• Movies included “Guys and Dolls” and “Around the World in Eighty Days.”
• An oral Vaccine developed against Polio,
• The first Transatlantic Telephone Cable goes in operation
• Average Cost of new house $11.700.00
  Average Monthly Rent $88.00
  Average Yearly Wages $4.450.00
  Cost of a gallon of Gas 22 cents
  Average Cost of a new car $2,050.0
• Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco

Nostalgia is Typically Fake News:

But don’t think for a moment I look back with nostalgia. My definition of nostalgia is “one-third selective memory, one-third wishful-thinking, and one-third make-believe.”

They were only “The good old days” because that’s when we were children, growing up, discovering the world, blissfully ignorant of politics and injustice, surrounded by family, and taken care of by people who loved us.

But the 1950s were only “Great” if you like institutionalized racism, keeping women “in their place,” systematic segregation that routinely excluded non-whites from access to jobs, housing, federal mortgage programs and more, tiered access to quality education, limited social mobility, separation and exclusion of anyone different (non-white, gay, physically handicapped, mentally challenged), and so much more.

Sixty-Three Rocks!

So I embrace sixty-three! I love the progress we are making as an inclusive society. I am still learning so much, and I try to be more open to growing as a person. I am finally beginning to figure some things out that have not only lifelong but eternal consequences.

As I look forward at who we are becoming (as we continue to grow into ourselves), I am convinced that God still has so much for me and Rebekah to immerse ourselves in as people of faith and emissaries of God’s Kingdom.

All I can say is “Watch this space” and see what happens next! We’re just getting warmed up. What a great adventure!

To The Adventure! – DEREK