Passages by the numbers lead to a revelation

That's right, it's a Lady Gaga t-shirt and I got it at a concert.

It's about those milestone birthdays, mostly the ones that have zeroes in them.

The first few you look forward to, those big days in the teens; first big one is the year you can drive. That was 16 in my case. The next was 18; you could drink in New York in those days. Of course you could count on getting drafted at that age also. The next is 21, today's drinking age and in some states, pot age. Oh yeah, in my day that's when you qualified to vote but I don't recall particularly looking  forward to that.

Then somewhere during the next nine years that balance shifts and you begin to dread those birthdays with zeroes in them. Thirty, forty, OMG 50, even.

Thirty was fine; I was embarking on a new job and a new marriage and in that period a move to Alaska, so there wasn't much time to worry about life at 30 and being over the hill.

Forty was the best ever. I had reached several lifetime goals in the previous year; my first book was published, I was an established boat captain, I had recently purchased my own little piece of Alaska where I intended to build a cabin and, I woke up on my 40th birthday in the cabin of a 44-foot sailboat 1,000 miles off Cape Mendocino, California, on my way to Hawaii with a few friends.

Fifty went by fairly easily. I had thought I should do something to mark half a century but everything seemed contrived. At the time I had a new family, a 2-year-old son and a new career, so there was, again, a lot to occupy me. One thing I do remember about that birthday was discovering how myopic people can be. There was a small party and I remember from the cards that people younger than you tend to make fun of you getting older. It's like they can't see it coming for some reason. People older just wish you happy birthday, they know.

At 60 I was tangled in a custody battle, still learning to be a single father and learning to be a volunteer with kids' activities. I think it probably passed without much notice.

Seventy came and went without much notice either, although I did take a memorial sailing trip to mark 30 years at sea in one form or another. But 70 brings some concerns; you have to acknowledge you are old. People think they are cheering you up with sympathetic sayings like "it's only a number." The hell with that. Seventy is old. But that doesn't mean you have to give in to it. The only concession I have made was I finally realized I am not going to play major league baseball. The rest I embraced: aging is the next adventure and  the next step toward that last day when I come dashing around third, slide headfirst into home and stand up screaming in the cloud of dust, "that was a hell of a ride."

Since that birthday I am constantly on the lookout for the signs, those things that tell you your age, the aches and pains, the shorter vertical jump (can't quite dunk anymore), a few more seconds off your hundred-yard dash, it gets tougher to throw a baseball faster than 50 mph (we didn't have radar guns when I was a kid pitcher) and of course each discovery means the end. But it isn't.

Something happened in that 70th year. Sitting around after deadline at a newspaper one night I mentioned I was going to be 71 soon. One fellow seriously asked my why I don't act my age. I have a good answer for that question, but the silence was too long  and the conversation passed to another subject, leaving the question unanswered and my friend thinking he had stopped me and made me think about it. The answer was quite simple: first there's the joke if you make it to 50 without growing up, you don't have to. But my answer comes from something Truman Capote said about childish writers. He pointed out that when we are kids every day is different and we wake up excited looking toward a new experience. As adults we outgrow that and take on a much more mundane world. But creative people still look at the world wide-eyed and anticipating new insights and experiences. That makes them seem childish and I think that is the answer I would have given. I think that's part of what's kept me vital.

So with that in mind here we come to the revelation. It developed during the previous month at the East Pole and continues into the woodpile at the other house. As a younger man I dreaded the infirmities that I expected in my old age ­­– meaning beginning in my 70s. But here I am at 73 still taking on the world with some measure of physical vigor, doing quite well alone in the Alaska woods, swinging an axe like I mean it, throwing the snowmachine around when it's stuck and still walking with a spring in my step. The revelation is that instead of moaning about being old, I find myself  bragging about all that I can do. Praise the lord and pass the IcyHot.

So, from the old Peggy Lee song, "… if that's all there is, then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze and have a ball."

Eighty isn't that far off: Bring it!