Gray And Still Graceful

(Written two years ago)

I will turn 50 on my next birthday. 50. A half-century. Half of one hundred. Most likely ten years past middle age. The downward slope, the other side of the mountain, the slow skid. 50, for crying out loud. 5-freaking-zero.

When I was a kid in grade school, 50 meant old, decrepit, wrinkled and annoying. In my teens, 50 translated into, “Your life is over.” Raising my kids during my twenties and thirties, I barely had time to think about my own age, let alone an upcoming birthday like 50. When my family-rearing slowed down in my forties, 50 meant the Empty Nest, maybe finally having time and money to do cool things and go to cool places. Nowadays, I am amazed at how small the number 50 actually looks close-up.

The glaringly obvious and occasionally disheartening physical signs of near-50 are keeping me in a constant state of “You have GOT to be kidding me,” or “Well, that’s just wrong.” Gravity is my enemy, and my long boobs can attest to that. The cute little smile lines alongside my mouth that I started to get in my early forties now deeply parenthesize my confused frown. Important documents or illegal drugs can be safely tucked away in my Caesarean scar and the tops of my thighs haven’t seen the light of day since 1993. We won’t even discuss my ass.

Dimples are cute, but not when they are on one’s legs. Can you say “Wide-skirted bathing suits?” I noticed that my upper arms were kind of loose when I was shaking a can of whipped cream the other day. I heard this odd sound, like someone throwing a wad of Silly Putty against a wall. Imagine my despair when I realized that it was the flesh of my upper arms actually flapping, yes, flapping, against my sides. Even my feet have betrayed me by becoming wider and flatter. Walking barefoot across a tile floor, I sound like a duck-billed platypus.

The mental changes that I have gone through are profound. I find I can’t remember the name of the person who got me my first job when I was sixteen. Oh, wait. I just remembered. It was my father. My mind wanders a lot more than it ever did. I need an adding machine to add more than two numbers, including single-digit ones. I call my kids by every name besides their own, causing my youngest to introduce himself to me on an almost daily basis. “Hi, I’m Donnie. Have we met?”

I am skipping periods like a defective typewriter. I only get periods nowadays on special occasions, such as every summer holiday weekend, Christmas Eve, or our twenty-fifth anniversary cruise, and then they last for two weeks. I often have menstrual cramps similar to those I experienced when I was fifteen. Headaches are very common, including the ones I cause my family. My eyesight is changing, making the task of painting my toenails a challenge. I can only see to do the job properly if my nose is a half-inch away from my toenails. The physical contortions required for me to do a halfway neat job of applying the polish are enough to have my leg muscles screaming in protest and trembling for an hour afterwards.

The new trend in the United States is that women in their 50s or older are better and more beautiful than they were at age 20. This myth has been perpetuated by 50-something females who have money, have stayed the same one-digit size since their junior high school graduation, and think stretch marks are what happens to one’s high tech spandex workout gear after many washings. You know the ones I mean. Those chic broads who have beautifully cut silver hair and who dress in trim and classic clothes and never look messy or old; they’re the ones giving aging a bad name. The REAL women know that this “better after 50” theory is pure crap. The REAL women are the ones whose gunmetal gray hair is either thinning or frizzing and whose makeup disappears into oblivion around noon every day. They are the wonderfully rumpled and pleasantly rounded near-sighted females who burst into tears with no warning, put melted chocolate on almost everything they eat, or find themselves daydreaming about what it would feel like to randomly run people over with their car.

I normally love birthdays and anticipate them with all the eagerness of an eight year old. But this one coming up, the Big One, is a bit intimidating. The only way I’ll get through it successfully is if I am given a huge surprise party and everyone who attends gives me money or expensive gifts and tells me how good I look without including the phrase, “…for your age.”