Day 1 suffrage cake

Happy Birthday to me! It’s Day 1 of my Year of Being 50.

I’m officially what I consider old. Not old old, but.. old. My brain is having a hard time wrapping itself around the concept of being 50, a half century. Plus the fact that, most likely, more than half of my life is over. Unless, of course, I take after my great-grandmother, who lived to be 103, but she had lost her mental faculties by the end there, so it didn’t really matter.

I mean, AARP is courting me on every social media app. I’m a walking cliche with all the noise I make when I sit down and stand up. My back hurts a lot (despite doing my prescribed physical therapy exercises). My hair is turning white (though much slower than I’d feared). I’m having my own personal summer (hot flashes) that isn’t consistent enough to keep me warm in the winter, so I’m constantly having to don and shed my zip-up hoodie constantly. People I know, and famous people who have always been fixtures in society, are dying at an alarming rate.

Welcome to 50.

The only things that seem to help me deal with the aging process are realizing that my health is actually pretty good compared with a lot of others my age, and to pay attention to other people who are my age, or those every-so-slightly older, who have already made this transition to the other side of 50. It makes me feel more like I’m not in this alone.

Now, excuse me while I go spend my day with my favorite people eating tasty food and doing fun activities. I had originally hoped to spend my birthday in Europe (because Europe), but I long-ago realized that wouldn’t work since my birthday is in the middle of a semester—kid #2 is still in college and kid #1 works at a school. And now with the pandemic, I wouldn’t have been able to relax and enjoy myself anyway. It’s fine, though; Europe will still be there when I can make it over, and we have a lot of adventures planned for my Year of Being 50.

Stay tuned.

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