You remember your father’s fingers curling around the head of your new born baby. They are long, the nails rectangular and pared, clean pink and white, like the baby. Her head fills one of his hands and he uses the other to cradle her body neatly to him. He has his hands full, which is why, when the tears start to leak out of his eyes, he has to turn away, towards the window in the corner of the hospital room.

I’m sixty-three years old and in unchartered territory on this day of my birth.

• Old enough for Social Security, not old enough for Medicare.

• Old enough to be called “retired,” not old enough to be considered “an elder.”

• Physically (i.e., how I feel) too old for the Iron Woman Triathalon, but not too old for Advanced Yoga.