Silver belle
As I noted in my previous column, I am turning 50 this June, which — in case you haven’t noticed all the prom gowns, stretch Humvees and shirtless dudes on Congress Street — is upon us. And, as you can imagine, I’ve been giving a lot of thought over the past months to what I’m going to say about this milestone. I wondered, Will I tread the path of those who aged before me and go the Dave Barry/Steve Martin Oof, my achin’ back! Where are my bifocals? I can’t remember if I wear bifocals anymore… route? Or would I try the sniveling, Why hath God wrought wrinkles upon my neck? approach of Nora Ephron? Or would I joke about empty nests, new careers, colonoscopies, AARP, Botox, inner beauty, soy Chai, menopause, Pilates, Red Hats, boob jobs and bra fat?
(This last item is something that, thankfully, hadn’t crossed my radar until I started perusing the 25 million Google hits concerning what others have to say about turning 50. It seems a lot of women are as freaked about the little rolls of fat seeping like Poppin’ Fresh dough out of their Latex bras as they are about their march toward the grave.)
But no. All that crap is so Boomerly annoying it makes me want to choke on my Boniva. OK, so I don’t take Boniva, but I would like to punch Sally Field in the throat every time she says she does. (I’m sorry. That’s a little harsh, but I only have a few days left before my cute-n-cranky personality transforms into straight-up crotchety, so I need to get a couple final jabs in. Besides, I couldn’t really clock Gidget, now could I?)
So, if carping about getting old is off the table, what remains? Maybe I could take the “50 is the new 30” stance, sing and celebrate my body electric and pull a Madonna (sans bustier and macrobiotic diet — unless, of course, a microbrewotic diet counts). I could proclaim to the world how my unflabby upper arms are still capable of propelling me into a roundoff, even if said gymnastic stunt might result in a pulled butt muscle that will take almost a year to mend. (Oof, nearly there.) I could boast about the iron I pump, the fact I bike around town, the way I thunder up and down stairs (because I can), but then I would sound like, well, Madonna, and I would have to shoot myself.
Perhaps, then, quiet contemplation is more in order. I have friends who used turning 50 as a threshold moment. They spent significant amounts of time casting back on where they’d been and surveying the terrain before them. Old emotional stuff was chucked, new goals were set, plans were made. That’s all very admirable and appealing, except that when you spend most of your working life examining and documenting everything you, yourself, are doing, there’s not a lot left to contemplate. As for projecting, being someone who did not even think about college until the fall of her senior year of high school, did not start her professional life until her thirties, didn’t get married until the age of 40, didn’t have a book published (despite an entire lifetime of writing) or own a home until she was 42, and didn’t start an IRA until last year, foresight and planning have never been a strong suit. Besides, who has time to do all that inward/forward looking when I’m busy searching for my trifocals? (Oh, wait. We elders call them progressive lenses.)
A peek back at how I dealt with turning 40 offered nothing (how handy it is in one’s dotage to have one’s columns collected for ready referencing). I knew back then that I should’ve felt something — angst, regret, remorse for my squandered youth, flesh creeping out of my sports bra — but all I could muster was a cop from J. Alfred Prufrock: “I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottom of my leggings rolled.”
When I lived in San Francisco, my favorite bartender told me on the eve of my thirtieth birthday that life begins at 30. On my twenty-first birthday, I took a night train from Nice and met my friends Jim and Pat in Paris, where, after we polished off the bottle of Ouzo I’d brought from Greece, I ran up and down the quay along the Seine exclaiming, “C’est mon anniversaire!” And I remember the night before I turned 10. I lay in bed, tearfully realizing I was about to exit my single digits forever.
Yet, as memorable as those milestones have been, I can’t say they altered who I am any more than any other moment has. As I see it, we turn a corner every day. For some, the Aha! of enlightenment awaits. For others, it’s just a steaming pile of poo in your path. What each day brings depends on where you step.
Life clearly did not start for me at 30, nor is it over at 50. So bring on the Boniva, hand over that senior’s discount, and you kids get outta my yard!
It’s a great time to be silver.
Old Lady Peavey shakes her fist from this perch monthly.
