When I'm 64

A birthday wish for a Mother's Day activism

May 7 I turned 64. The age Paul McCartney imagined as the end.

You can’t blame him, at no more than 16 he wrote a classic ode to later life, his own 64th natal anniversary a good half century ahead.

When I’m 64 is on constant loop in my head these days.

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four

The other night, my husband, Karl and I found ourselves in the audience at a jazz jam with a handful of men in their mid-fifties—still climbing and skiing down mountains and other dicey places around here. My worn knees protest at the thought.

The ladies in my morning online writing group, some with a couple decades on me, are busy creating, from the written word to ambitious visual art installations.

My father, a landscape architect, created elaborate cards with folded paper and magic markers. For my 7th birthday, he created a card of several layers, the center opening to a big smily face and HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE!

My mother of six had the uncanny ability of making each of us feel like we were her favorite; while instilling the value of “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.”

This is my first birthday since my parents passed on. They both slipped away to the other side in Decembers, Mom in 2022 and Dad in 2025. Thanks to dementia, they didn’t “know” it was my birthday in their last years. But look what I woke up to on my birthday morning!

A work art by our toddler grand twins, with a little help from their parents.

We celebrated my birthday with a family cook out in a cove looking out on islands, mountains and glaciers; here in Southeast Alaska, where it takes all evening for the sun to set and light the sky on fire.

At nearly six and a half decades around the sun, I feel lucky beyond measure. A wish as I blew out the square root of 64 on a salmon burger “cake”? To do better by my fellow human beings.

Karl and I have been together since we met at San Francisco State University forty-four years ago. It was in college that I began attending Friends (Quaker) Meetings, wherein people sit together in silence, with the belief that the divine (aka God) is in and accessible to all.

After meetings we’d write letters on behalf of people unfairly held in gulags in the U.S.S.R. or prisons in Zimbabwe, prisoners of conscience advocated for by Amnesty International.

I spent 1984 in Europe as an exchange student. At the border East German guards in grey wool uniforms with grey faces confiscated my Amnesty International greeting cards.

Hence began a continuing monthly donation to Amnesty International.

Back in the 80’s I never imagined that in 2026, Amnesty International would be advocating for human beings held in inhumane conditions in the United States of America. People who are seeking a safer, better life. The kind of life my family and me are privileged to live, with basic human rights.

When she turned 64 more than twenty years ago, Pulitzer prize winning columnist Ellen Goodman wrote, “You don't get to 64 without losses. Huge losses.” I imagine she was referring to the deaths of family members or good friends.

I am thinking of the at least 400,000 people deported , more than 60,000 detained in illegal concentration camps like Alligator Alcatraz, and those dying in custody.

Goodman wrote that in your mid-sixties, you can theoretically wonder what you’ll do with the rest of your life. It’s just that the rest of your life is a lot shorter than when you turned 29. A truncated “adolescence”, that calls for, “resilience in the face of loss and gratitude in the face of bounty.”

My bounty runneth over. And I’m good on the gratitude front. We live in a comfortable, safe and close-knit community near our children and grandchildren. But resilience is illusive in the face of the horrific treatment of our fellow human beings by the federal government. At its worst ripping thousands of children who are U.S. citizens away from their immigrant parents.

On Mother’s Day we celebrate the sacredness of the mother-child bond. A broken connection with the separation of families by Immigration Control Enforcement.

It turns out that the American Friends Service Committee, (introduced to me in college), is standing with immigrant families. Across the country this Mother’s Day, vigils are being held and Mother’s Day cards written to detainees. Most significantly, volunteers are documenting detentions, and providing financial and legal assistance to families separated by ICE.

The least I can do is start another monthly donation.

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Peace and Love Always, Katie B.