Thoughts on Turning Fifty

It feels like that subject line must be in reference to someone else, because I'm having trouble reconciling that as MY reality.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not particularly maudlin or gloomy (although I admit to indigo moments in recent days).  Instead I feel a tad confused, as if today marks the day that I turn male, or Indonesian, or perhaps into a pomegranate.  It just doesn't seem possible that I am fifty years old.

Somewhere in my alarmingly swollen collection of mementos, I have a small blue bear from my own infancy.  He is missing an eye and a half, and his neck is scrawny and wrung out from apparent tiny death grips, and if he ever had fur, I don't remember it - he's got more of a worn nubby terry cloth nature to his hide.  There's a smidge of red felt hanging rudely where a nose or mouth would've been.

Plainly speaking - he looks like hell. 

**********

Day before yesterday, I went to get a hair cut-and-highlights after work.  I'm not gray yet, but my natural color is politely referred to as dirty blond and it makes me look dead in the winter. It had been six months since my last appointment, and the stylist literally went "tsk, tsk" as she examined my roots.  Seriously - "tsk, tsk".  I felt chastised and guilty for my lack of hair discipline.

Because I primarily telecommute these days, I don't often bother with makeup, so I was au naturale.  After the coloring and shampoo, the stylist led me to her chair for my haircut.

As I sat down, hair still damp and towel around my neck, I was startled to see my mother looking back at me from the mirror.  Not the young, Marilyn-esque version, but the old crazy one.  (See Mother's Day post for further detail.)  Most of the time, I more closely resemble my dad, but there she was, disdain and condemnation clearly written all over her face.  I sat back and wanted to cry, but my sparkly 30-something stylist was bubbling about what she plans to do when she turns fifty, which is to get appallingly drunk and screw a movie star in Las Vegas.

You go gurrrl.

**********

It is an early Saturday morning as I write;  I stayed up far too late, wandering around on Spotify and listening to the music of my youth.  Yet my eyes popped back open at 3:30 a.m., and by 4:15 I was already irritated with the day ahead.  So I decided to get up and write.  And here I am. 

I haven't written in over a month because I am supposed to finish up the posts about Nicaragua, and I haven't wanted to do that because the next installment will have to be about the day when I was awful and I don't want to write about that.  Suffice to say that everything mean and selfish and bad about me was hanging out on display like a hooker in Amsterdam's red light district.  I'm told that nobody else really noticed - which is a polite and probably true thing to say.  I'm the only one obsessed with me and my mercurial moods.

Anyhow, guilt about unwritten posts notwithstanding, it seemed silly to let these quiet early morning hours pass without reminiscing and memorializing some of my thoughts on turning fifty today. 

**********

I wonder sometimes if we'll get to sit down in heaven with a big screen TV and watch our old earthly lives on DVR.  I hope there is a fast-forward button for the gross parts but also a slow motion button for all the beautiful parts.

I don't suppose I have to wait until then to remember some of them (in no particular order)...:

...our little and 100% perfect wedding in rural Kansas (beautiful)
...my mother's suicide attempts and institutionalizations (gross)
...trips with best friends to Alaska and the Caribbean and Washington D.C. and NYC and Nicaragua and Mexico and a dozen FL beaches (beautiful)
...my parents' divorce (gross)
...family beach trips (beautiful)
...a thousand beach memories (also beautiful)
...tearfully humming "Jesus Loves Me" in the back of a cop car (gross, but also kind of funny in retrospect)
...a dozen hot air balloons launching outside my window one morning (beautiful)
...a harvest moon hanging over the ocean (duh)
...seeing the scales approach 270 (gross)
...seeing the scales approach 170 (beautiful)
...weeping quietly in church pews at weddings and funerals and baptisms and most Sundays in general (I need an "other" category for this one)
...my mother's death (also "other")
...my mother playing with her grandbabies (beautiful on steroids)
...accidentally starting a fire by hanging my pants in front of the bathroom heater (I was 14, but still gross)
...stealing my mom's car to go meet boys and drink beer but instead backing into a gas pump and crying hysterically while the cops called my dad (uber gross)
...my father coming to see me graduate high school (beautiful)
...my father coming to see me graduate college (beautiful)
...my first marriage (other)
...my Walk to Emmaus (beautiful times infinity, really)
...falling asleep in the backseat as a kid (beautiful)
...Friday nights at the Ice Chalet and the first time somebody asked me to skate with them during the "couples" skate session (beautiful)
...my friends Max the dachshund, Montgomery the cat, Gillieflower the dachshund, Grover the black-and-tan coonhound, Grace the bloodhound, Esme the cat, Gladys the cat, Humphrey the maltese, Purrl Perkins the cat, Gwinevere the collie, Daisy Chin the cat, Little the beagle, Precious the scottie, Gorgeous the cat, Elvis the beagle, Ebenezer the schnauzer, Irving the dachshund, Magnolia the cat, Pootie the cat, Sandy the cat (all more beautiful than my heart can stand remembering)
...my husband's face during the births of our children (beautiful times ten million)
...my daughter's piano recital (beautiful)
...my son's mission work (beautiful)
...my son's first time as acolyte (beautiful)
...my daughter's daily side ponytail (beautiful)
...my thirtieth birthday (drunk on a barstool at La Paz - not beautiful)
...my fortieth birthday (got a tattoo out of spite and denial - also not beautiful)

...my baby sister texting me just now, at 6:30 a.m., to ask if we are grown ups yet (completely beautiful)

Wonder how the day ahead of me will be categorized? 

I will keep you posted.