This chapter of my life will open with my 70th birthday.

If I make it this far, I expect that my life will improve about now.

The life expectancy of a US "white male" born around 1959 is 72 years, suggesting an expected date of death, all other things equal (which they are not) around 2031, but that includes all those who don't survive the high mortality teen years, and so on. Since we already know that I've made it to age 44, my IRS calculated life expectancy in 2004 is for an additional 37 years, or to the age of about 81, around the year 2041.

The fact that my parents have already lived to 78 makes it seem reasonable that I might hold out for that many years, to around 2041.

We are warned by those who issue such warnings to plan to work longer than our parent's generation, and if my work is enjoyable I would welcome that. But, even if I want to work into my late seventies it seems likely that by the middle of this chapter (age 73, the year 2032) I will be working more slowly and taking life a little more easily.

Perhaps these will be years of figuring out what to do after work, or negotiating the transition toward retirement.

By this time, if I survive, I will have found away to think of myself as an old man. I will have at least begun to sort out the kind of old man I am, just as I once sorted out the kind of adolescent I was, and the kind of young man I was, and much as I am now, in 2003, sorting out the kind of father and husband and middle-aged man I am.

There is only one question to ask, as I sit here in 2004. Will the body hold out? And will the brain hold out? Those two questions are the same in my mind.