Half a Century

It’s a mixed bag, this aging thing. Here I sit, less than three months off from ‘that’ birthday—you know what I’m talking about, I know you do—the so-called “Big Five-O.”  I’ve been thinking about it, pondering it, rolling it around in my mouth, chewing on it for the last year or so, trying to figure out the flavor of the thing. After all, it’s pretty momentous to be alive for half a century. Isn’t it? Or am I just being another self-indulgent navel-gazing baby boomer, trying to turn something as ordinary as the aging process into something … hmmm, well … mystical? That would be a very baby boomer-ish thing to do, I suppose. After all, as a generation we to tend to see ourselves as the authors of everything. Okay, so Al Gore never actually claimed to “discover” the Internet … but historically the lot of us have proven to be rather self-absorbed. I’m as guilty as the next person.

It’s not like I’m the first woman who decided to go gray according to my body’s plan (which, as it turned out, meant that my initial silver strands began sprouting in my mid-twenties).  It’s certainly not as if I’m the only female on my block who has dismissed the option of elective plastic surgery to stave off the appearance of pending entropy. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to feeling a bit smug when I see women around my age returning from two and three week “vacations” sporting mysteriously—and sometimes shockingly—younger looking faces. One woman—a distant acquaintance—came back from just such a jaunt last year, presenting to the world not only a lineless visage, but an entirely new nose, looking like nothing so much as Barbie’s. Unfortunately, her new doll-inspired proboscis wasn’t really the right size or shape for the nostrils that came with the original model. So what’s that about?

Perhaps it’s unkind of me to make such observations, but I find the whole business of personal reinvention to be perplexing at best. And who am I kidding? I wear make-up, I pluck my eyebrows, I love clothes and make-up and all that girly-girl stuff. I’m embarrassed to admit that I read celebrity gossip (though I don’t actually buy the magazines—I get my fix in doctors’ waiting rooms). I check myself in a full-length mirror before going out, and have asked my husband the dreaded question thousands of times, “Does this (dress, skirt, pair of pants, etc.) make me look fat?” So where do I get off criticizing other women who might take the vanity equation a little further than I might? Do we not all suffer from our own personal insecurities? Do we not all—deep in our hearts—wish we were more attractive? Even just an eensy little bit?

But.

As I grow older, I am also discovering some things about myself—and about life in general—that I hadn’t expected.