Well, she was just sevent-eee!

Father Arlo Bernardo Yap, SVD, played music to a group of old girls.  He said, “Pair music with happy thoughts and you’ve got a winning combination.” 

 He also said that in the movie Hook, the father, played by Robin Williams, had suppressed his boyhood so hard that he could not recall any images or adventure associated with it, no matter how hard he tried.

 “Think happy thoughts!” Tinker Bell suggested.  Wrinkling his brow, Robin’s character shut his eyes tight until a happy vision came to mind:  the birth of his firstborn.  It filled him with so much delight that his feet slowly rose above the ground and soon, he was flying.      

“Music unfurls the knots of angst, disappointments, and insecurities in our lives,” Father Arlo continued.

How true.  It also stirs up memories of the past that make you feel good all over, from the top of your head to the very tip of your toes.

 At the first song he played, our faces lit up.  We sighed, whistled, and clapped.  “That’s so long ago!’ cried a beaming classmate.  “Oh, but what kilig moments it brought back,” cheered another.  Our songs were like the sparks from a relay of fireworks.  Once released, they tugged at the heart, leaving one breathless. 

When I looked around, everyone was smiling.  (A gentleman once remarked that the most dangerous animal in the world is a woman sitting quietly and smiling.)

What thoughts ran across our heads?  That our bunch has reached its 70th summer or is closely getting there.  If it were a show-and-tell class, what was there to brag and/or chatter excitedly about?   We had burst the myth balloons of every milestone birthday.

• At 40 — over the hill? Definitely not!  We were making waves in our profession and raising, if not, nurturing family and dear ones;

• At 50 — midlife crisis?  Perchance, in family challenges, career cycles, and some health issues, but nothing that a little more resolve, prayers, pills, and patience can’t smoothen out;   

• At 60 — retirable?  Not when you’re still jumping with wit, spunk, and energy.  You’re honest enough, however, to embrace the fringe benefits of reaching this milestone with dignity and humor.  Think faster lanes, free movies, markdown travel and meals, and taking the place of pride at home and among peer; 

• At 70 — put out to pasture?  Author Liz Byrski ditched this.  “We’re confident, independent, free to choose what we would or wouldn’t do. We have power.  Seventy is the magic age that opens the door to all the above and the start of a rich and satisfying stage of life.” 

At 70, you are someone to envy.  Prominence and clout have lost their appeal; therefore, life ceases to be a competition.  You’re uncompromised and detached. Ambition no longer drives you to scale the heights of acclaim or ring the bell to prove your strength and dominion.  “Tapos na yan,” (that’s over) you say, spoken with a tone of humility, gratefulness, contentment, and entitlement.

Whatever the outcome of your struggles, it proved to have toughened you up to face the more forgiving and mellow years.  You are the living proof.  Wrinkles have sprouted here and there (be proud of your wrinkles, they give you character), hair turned to silver (whatever is left), blurry eyesight, movement down tempo and calculated, but what the heck; they’re like the polished medals that you could now pin and show off in your combat-of-life jacket. 

And so Father Arlo played more music that sent us down memory lane, in the sweet tumble of time.

I saw myself sitting in a row, next to other classmates who were beaming with youth and anticipation.   

“Do you see that young man in a cream suit?” I whispered. 

“Oh wow!  He’s looking so fine,” giggled a friend.

“Where, which one?” asked another. 

Before I could point him out, the combo began to play a Beatles classic. Well, she was just seventeen, and you know what I mean. 

“Oh dear, it’s that darn wallflower panic time again; will I sit this one out?” I thought.  I cast my eyes down and managed a polite cough.  Suddenly, a pair of two-toned, hand-stitched, wing-tipped leather shoes appeared before me.  I looked up and there was the young man in a cream suit.  He wore dimples.  He put his right hand across and asked, “May I have this dance?” At this point, all memory was shredded.  The world simply twirled and zoomed in on this handsome pair and this rarefied moment they shared.    I was seventeen.

Seventeen?

The years have shown that I could actually multiply that moment seventeen, I mean, sevent-eee times more.  In the warm company of those I truly love and revere, minus the panic attack.

It made me so mystifyingly glad.