I was standing in line at the pharmacy the other day when I dropped a jar of skin lotion. A woman in front of me, I would guess she was in her 70’s, immediately, even urgently offered to pick it up for me.

“That’s okay,” I said, “I can get it.” She looked even more concerned.

“Are you sure?” she asked, doubtful and in a worried voice.

I leaned over and picked up the lotion and thanked her, but I did wonder what I must have looked like to her if she thought I couldn’t pick up the jar. Did I really look like someone who can’t pick something up off the floor? I do it quite often.

I was pretty sure she was older than I am. I couldn’t help but wonder what she saw that I didn’t. I do notice the sullen and indifferent clerks in the hardware store sometimes even offer to haul large purchases out to my car.

I wonder if they aren’t fearful of my dropping dead in front of them, and their getting sued.

I get the same dissonant feeling sometimes when I am walking past a store window and wonder who that man in the window is. It couldn’t be me; I’m not that old.

I know I am at the brink of life, a place the dictionary defines as “the edge of a cliff or other high area, or the point at which something good or bad will happen.” The dictionary I looked at added this phrase: “The company was on the brink of collapse.”

At my age, good and bad things happen, often at the same time.

When I was younger, I was also on the brink, but it was a beginning. Maria and I argue about this all the time. I mention that I am old now, and she says, “yes, but you’re not really old, and she means it.

We all know where the brink goes when we are “really” old, it’s right off the cliff. But I’m not sure what really old means.

I see obituaries of friends and colleagues and hear stories all the time of people my age dying suddenly, or after long and painful illnesses.

The funny thing is I am comfortable with where I am in life, more than any other time in my life. I have a more vibrant and deeper perspective on my life, my present, and when I think about it, my future. It’s true, even the most obtuse and willful people will learn something if they live long enough.

Aging brings things and takes things away. I am better equipped to be a loving and supportive husband; I am softer and more useful as a father; I am beginning to understand friendship and what it means to me.

And I believe my writing is deeper and wiser than ever. I have so many things to say.

I have this strange but exciting feeling that I am not losing my creativity, but just beginning to be creative – in my blog, my photos, even my fish tank.

With Zinnia, I see I have come to a new level of patience, empathy, and experience. Our training is quiet and loving and beautiful.

As I shed my anger and impatience, I am learning to listen and to think. I take a nap once in a while.

I embrace the quiet, the solitude, the time of inner silence. I could never do that before. I love being alone, and I love getting a chance to think. I love doing good; I love learning how to do it well.

My granddaughter is on the brink of everything.

So am I, at 72, I am on the brink of the rest of my life, and of understanding what my future means, including death, which I can sometimes almost sniff.

Like most people my age, I live with some ongoing challenges to my health. They are no urgent threat to my life, but I am conscious of spending more and more time with specialists, who aren’t there to take my blood pressure. And of course, I know the pharmacy well. I am pleased to be able to report. I can still pick up things I drop.

When I call for an appointment, the nurses make it sooner rather than later; I love to joke with them about it.

I still have all my original body parts, and enough energy to do what I want to do and more than I should do some days.

I want to write more about growing older, not to lament it, but to appreciate it and capture its glory and challenge. My editor always warned me not to write too much about getting older; he said young people would run away.

But I don’t believe that. We are all getting older every minute with every breath.

I want to share what I am learning.

I intend to do it well, and occasionally.

And you know what? I am just beginning to understand that I will be okay, and I treasure this time to write, take photos, love my wife, meet my friends for lunch, walk in the woods, be alone with my dogs.

I am okay. I am going to be okay. I love saying that out loud. I want to grab my daughter and every young person I see and shake them and say, “you will be okay!” But they’d probably lock me up.

And of course, I mean to feed and nourish my precious blog, every single day. I am never too tired for that.

I love figuring out who I am, something I have never been able to do. And I am old enough to define it for myself, to not let other people do it.

I thought of myself and my life – and my wonderful wife –  when I read this quote from Thomas Merton’s Message Of Hope:

“I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible. And the deepest level of communication is not communication but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech and beyond concept.”

That’s who I am. That’s where I am. On the brink, on the margins.

(As I write this, I’m listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Shaka Zulu album, Maria and I are going to see them in concert in Troy, N.Y., on Thursday.  I can’t always listen to music when I write, but their music is a meditation for me, it opens my soul.)