Birthdays are milestones. They stand for all the good in life that can be achieved over one’s journey around the sun. They also remind me that getting older is not for the faint of heart. If a man makes it long enough, he will experience both. I should know. As of today I’ve had 70 of them.

I can’t really brag about 70. My grandfather on my mama’s side made it into his 91st year. His parents both made it to 98. I have cousins and good friends who are much, much, much older than me. To them, I am only a whipper-snapper.

On the Chappell side of the family, I have good reason to be grateful. My grandfather and his brother only made it to 65. Their younger brother, my great uncle Clem, made it to 69. He is the only male relative of that generation that I knew as a young boy. I have now outlived them all.

It is strange to think that I am older now than my namesake, my grandpa, Paul Kimbel Chappell. I have only one small black and white photo of him. He’s wearing bibbed overalls. A short sleeved shirt. His arms, even in the crinkled up picture, looked baked by the sun. His hair is dark. My best guess is that he is standing in front of the old homeplace sometime in the 1930s.

Mama always told me that I have his hair.

“Yours is gonna turn snow white one of these days,” she would say to me.

The truth is inescapable.

I am not somber about 70. Not at all. According to FB and the remarkable photoshop talents of my wife, I am turning cartwheels and backflips over it. You might have seen those pictures.

My son says to me, “Marion has been posting some crazy pictures of you lately.”

He’s not wrong. So, I owe it to y’all to set the record straight.

Her daughter recently showed her how to use ChatGPT, and AI has taken over the wheels inside her brain. She already was taking more pictures than any other human I’ve ever known. Now she has a tool at her disposal which allows her to manipulate those pictures in ways that are either extremely embarrassing or extremely funny, depending on how you look at them.

But you can’t help but look at them.

Take the cartwheel pictures for example. That photo was taken on a suspension bridge over a 450 ft deep canyon just outside Golden, British Columbia. The actual photograph was simple. I’m standing on a bridge that is slightly swaying over a perilous chasm. And in that photo I am holding onto the cables with a steel grip. The smile is real. The jeans and sweater are real. The rest…well, you can see for yourself.

I don’t think I’ve turned a cartwheel since my 13th birthday. That was 8th grade and Coach Orr was running us through our gymnastic drills. I could walk on my hands the length of the gym floor. I could swing over the parallel bars. But every time I tried to go from a cartwheel into a round-off, I fell like a bug swatted out of mid-flight.

Also, I could never pull off an aerial flip. Not on a diving board. Not on a trampoline. I tried multiple times in gym class, but I would always roll to one side and land on my rib cage. The swimming pool was forgiving. The gym mats softened my landing. The trampoline would bounce me around like a ragdoll. No way, 57 years later, I’m gonna try a somersault from the deck of a swinging bridge.

I’m okay with the real me. A little slower than I used to be. A little rounder than I used to be. That happened at my 40th birthday and I’ve never been able to wear a size 30 belt since. I’m a lot more grey on top with a lot less hair than I once had, all of which started somewhere around my 50th birthday. One back surgery and five colonoscopies later, I’m amazed that I made it past 60.

I’m at the age when, in my eyes, professional ball players look like boys. High school cheerleaders look like little girls. Ladders and rooftops intimidate me. The hot, muggy days drain me. A half-day’s worth of chores take two days. I will pay to have things repaired because I’ve done my share of it and don’t feel like doing it myself. And I’m perfectly okay with popcorn and ice cream for supper.

At 70, I think I am more aware than ever of what matters. The things that are truly valuable. I am doing my best to be there for my family and to embrace all the people who mean something in my life. I know exactly how broken and imperfect I am, and how that doesn’t seem to matter to those who love me anyway. I know that my faith is not about perfect Sundays, but rather about making that daily walk. Forgiveness is better given than received. Love covers a multitude of sins.

If you were to ask me what I expect out of life from this point forward, I’m not sure how I would answer that. My powers of prediction are feeble at best. With my cataracts I can’t see across the back yard, much less see what the next few years might be like.

But if I were to make a list, it would look something like this.

Accept the changes. Life has thrown a lot of challenges at me that are really beyond my ability to control. I’m finally learning not to see those as inhibitors to my joy but rather as invitations to a new path that is part of the plan.

Laugh some every day. It is true that God has a sense of humor. For whatever ails a man’s mind or soul, a good laugh has a way of bringing a balance back into focus that worry cannot diminish. This is why I don’t worry about the pics of me turning flips on a bridge. It’s funny.

Serve others. I have more time now than I’ve ever had before to be of some help to other people. I’m not always thinking about it. Sometimes I let opportunities get away from me. And I may not be very good at it. But I do know that the easiest way to forget about being older is to be a part of other people’s lives. Meeting the needs of others makes me think less of my own.

Look for the good. I’m not saying the bad doesn’t exist, but it’s not fair to say that the world has gone to hell in a hand basket either. There are good people everywhere. Good stories of kindness, sacrifice, and courage. Good things being done in the most unassuming ways. A man will see what he looks for. I’m looking for the good.

Maybe in another twenty years I can look back and see that I have taken my own advice.

Maybe there will be a pic of me still doing cartwheels at 90.