I have become an observer of the aging process. You spend the first 60 years on an upward climb attaining milestones such as childhood, leaving one’s family, pursuing an education and career, looking for a lifetime partner, finding a place to live and set down roots, possibly having one’s own children, keeping it all together. Then there is a point where the incline levels off and starts to aim in a downward direction. Sixty happens to be my year and I have noticed a definite psychological shift. There are no more milestones. In fact there seems to be a process of shedding.  There are so many things that do not need my attention.  Because other people, things, events will work themselves out in their own time. I make this claim because worrying about everyone and everything was a former full-time occupation.  That brings me to my mother who is 87 years old and undergoing a sort of personal Renaissance. She is living in a Elder Home on Main Street. There are 39 apartments with mostly single folks. She is making friends and possibly enemies. It makes me wonder if the downward slide of shedding is not what it seems.