In eight days, I turn sixty-four with the big sixty-five looming next year. Ordinarily, my birthdays go by without much thought.
When I turned fifty, I was at the National Square Dance Convention in Oklahoma City, OK and we turned a promotional After Party into a birthday party for me. It was the biggest party I’ve ever had. Jerry Junck and Mike Hogan, two caller friends, sang me “Happy Birthday” and serenaded me with a George Strait tune.
Mom wanted to do my 60th birthday up royal, but she died three months before, so it was a quiet observance in Branson, CO with family and friends.
As I face sixty-four and beyond, I wonder what my stacked up years mean–six decades. The world has changed drastically since 1953. From black and white TV to color–I remember the first time I saw a color TV with the brilliant peacock spreading her tail and a pan of the valley introducing “Big Valley.” Now I can hold an iPad in my hands and watch any TV show I want.
My first airplane flight at twenty was a champagne flight to San Diego. I felt like a queen and dressed up. A couple weeks ago, I flew to Virginia and wore capris and a t-shirt and was not served champagne.
Yet today, I feel so young. I dance 3-4 times a week and keep a busy schedule. I’m still active in retirement–actually busier than ever. I look in the mirror and scan my face. I don’t see any signs of aging–my colored red hair hides the scattered white and gray hairs that abound.
When my parents were in their sixties, they seemed so old, but that’s not me–not yet anyway!
Larada Horner-Miller is a poet, essayist and accomplished multi-genre author who holds a bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in Spanish and a master of education degree in Integrating Technology into the Classroom. She is the accomplished author of six award-winning biographies, historical fiction, memoir, and poetry works plus three self-published cookbooks.
Her sixth book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, is available in paperback and four e-book formats. Larada offers the reader the opportunity to look back at 2020 and the global pandemic through her prose and poetry through reading, then reflecting and responding. She addresses all the emotions she felt during this overwhelming time and leads the reader through to a self-access: bitter or better?
Her fifth book is the authorized memoir and biography of world-renown square dance caller Marshall “Flip” Flippo. Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flippo is available now in hardback, paperback and four e-book formats. Recently Just Another Square Dance Caller won two awards: Book Excellence Awards Finalist and Silver award for eLit. Book Awards.
Another recent book of hers, A Time to Grow Up: A Daughter's Grief Memoir has won many awards including being a 2018 Book Excellence Awards Finalist in the Memoir category at the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and a 2018 Independent Press Distinguished Favorites Award in the Memoir category. Horner-Miller has also been a past national presenter at the Women Writing the West Conference and is currently the creator of Memoir Workshops for others who want to share their family’s legacies through words.
Larada and her husband, Lin, enjoy being nestled in the mountains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, near the village of Tijeras. When not writing books, this passionate, energetic, and enthusiastic woman loves to spend time kicking up her heels at square dancing gatherings, traveling, knitting, and reading.
As co-manager of her family’s southeastern Colorado ranch, she enjoys spending time exploring her family’s historic ranch and reminiscing with her brother and his children about their mom, dad, and granddad.
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