Celebrating Life. Figuring out how old they would have been–year after year. Minus 40, then minus 4.

When I was taking a walk this morning and wishing that AnnaLeah and Mary could have been with me to celebrate my 60th birthday, I realized that it won’t be as hard as I thought to figure out each year how old they would have been.

As their siblings get older and leave AnnaLeah and Mary behind in their dust, I was worried that as I age I would have to work hard to calculate their would-have-been ages. It will be easy though. AnnaLeah was born when I was 40 (she liked to use her age to figure out how old I was!). And Mary was 4 years younger than her. So I simply have to take my age, subtract 40 for AnnaLeah and then 4 more for Mary.

I would have been 62 when Mary turned 18. My baby. Whom I was counting on to take care of me when I got older. (The rest of them will have to take up the slack.) She would have liked the walk I took in the woods today and the frisbee golf course.