My oldest sister, Ann, was born in 1947.  My son and I spent her birthday with her in 2008, the year she turned 61.  I asked her if she had felt any particular angst the prior year, when she hit the big 6-0.  She gazed past me for a few minutes, reflecting. Then she said, with a very simple air, “No, I got up that morning, looked in the mirror, and said, ‘Okay, Ann, this is what sixty looks like.’ ”  We fell silent, and I thought about her “sixty” — with its white-water rafting, its bicycling, and its medical missionary trips to South America.

I’m turning 59 in September.  I’ve looked in my own mirror, in anticipation of 2015 when I will attain that six-decade milestone.  Many years, many mirrors, have found me complaining about something that I see there:  Too pug-nosed, too crooked-teethed, too freckled, too frizzy.  I feel less dissatisfied these days.  I smile into the lenses aimed at me more often, my friend Penny tells me.  I squint less.  Perhaps I am learning to accept myself, if not to feel actual, full-fledged self-love.  In the very least, I’m beginning to think there might be hope that one day when I stand in front of the bathroom mirror to minister to the deleterious effects of aging, I might see myself smile.  “This is what sixty looks like, girl.  Deal with it.”  And perhaps I shall.