Middle Aged

I find it amusing, confusing, and bemusing that I am middle aged.

At 48, I am clearly in the middle part of my life (if I am lucky). I imagine celebrating my 100th birthday some day, and not everyone gets that lucky: life expectancy for women is 81 years, so if I'm average, I might only have 32 years left. I'm clearly in the middle of my life, no matter how I look at it.

What's weird about it is that I find it somewhat shocking. I suppose that time has passed for me as it has passed for everyone else, one minute, one hour, one day, one year at a time, and that is how I find myself here, but there is a part of it that makes me want to say, "Hold on, surely there has been a mistake?!"

I don't know what middle age is supposed to feel like, so I don't know if I'm getting it right. I have no idea what "right" middle age looks like.

I grew up with jokes that middle aged men had "crises" where they purchased sports cars, preferably red, but this confused me then and it confused me now. Why is that a crisis? If, at middle age, men could finally afford a sports car, and wanted to go have some fun, why is that silly or stupid or sad? But I'm not going to talk about middle aged men here because, well, I don't pretend to understand middle aged men in the slightest, but I have a few insights about being a middle aged woman. (Perhaps my male readers would like to chime in with their perspectives?)

Middle aged women, though, were invisible to me. Not young enough to be considered beautiful, sexy, or interesting, they were not old enough to be sweet little old ladies.

There are so many problems with that last sentence that I don't even know where to begin.

I think, if I have the messages "right," that the societal message for me as a middle aged woman is that I ought to invest in hair dye and anti-aging creme (they do know that the opposite of aging is death, right? do they know that?!). As I face my empty nest (my daughter is 15 and will head to college in a few short years) I am to struggle and wonder who I am now that mothering does not take up 99% of my waking thoughts. I am to wonder at millennials, and technology, and how I am not heard in meetings, and I am to start taking a back seat in my career. I am to slow down, to fade, to be quiet. I am invisible in film, on television, and in print media. I am to mourn that my hair isn't as thick and silky as it once was, and that my body is no longer suitable for bikinis.

And - and this is very important - I am supposed to believe that my life's path is set, that my chance to remake myself, my life, my passions, my impact, is done. I am to believe that it is what it is, I am either wildly successful or my life has been wasted, but it is what it is.

To all of that, I say PHOOEY.

Let's go over a few details about my life to bring you up to speed.

I'm 48, and I'm a divorced (about six years) single mom of a fifteen year old daughter. I'm a cancer survivor (breast cancer twelve years ago) and my body bears the scars and markings of that treatment, as well as the misfortune of living without estrogen since my diagnosis (all part of the treatment). Before divorce, I was a stay at home mom who was out of the workforce for close to a decade. My bank balance floats precariously close to disaster with great regularity; it seems a miracle that I have been able to stay on the right side of disaster as long as I have. Since divorce, I have restarted my career, starting from scratch to enter the non-profit world and working my way to an Executive Director position in that world, before returning to my true love of teaching and - at the age of 47 - taking on a teaching job for the first time in fourteen years.

You wouldn't be crazy if you looked at my life and said, "oh, honey, that sounds tough!" or "Bless your heart!" (if you're from the South). It's not all peaches and sunshine, and I couldn't blame you for thinking, "What a disaster!"

But you'd be wrong.

I am happier, right here and right now, than I have ever been in my entire life. I have a gray streak, funny little crinkles at the corners of my eyes, and my belly is soft....but I am strong, and healthy, and I don't feel gray, I feel...alive. Fiery. Vibrant. Nobody told me that I could feel like that, and I'm actually told that I DON'T feel like that. Take this article from The Atlantic about middle age: the writer tells me, "Perhaps it makes sense that middle-aged people increasingly cling to youth when the alternative is the slow drift into irrelevance."

Well.

No.

I think that the writer (who, to his credit, is reflecting what most people tell me or insinuate about middle age), is comically off his rocker if he's talking about my life. He's NOT talking about my life.

In middle age, I'm finally the me I've been longing to be all along. Oh, make no mistake, I wasn't aiming at a soft belly or a gray streak, but those things are so tiny compared to the rest. At 48, I'm not struggling to find my way under my parents' well intentioned but misguided patriarchal world view ("Why on earth would you want a masters degree if you're just going to have babies anyway?"), nor the desire to be a career woman but to navigate office politics that indicated that mens' voices were allowed but women shouldn't be strident or loud, and I'm through the difficult mess of trying to raise a young child whose needs, by definition, needed to be placed above my own. I created a career after my divorce that was based upon my daughter's need to access me, to flexibility, as well as the need to put food on the table, but now that she's older, I get to pick my own hours, and to cheerfully call her and say "Can you season the chicken and pop it in the oven, because I'm going to be late tonight?" without worrying about childcare or leaving her alone, because she's quite capable of putting chicken in the oven and old enough to enjoy having the house to herself for a couple extra hours as well. While I haven't found a grand romance since my divorce, I've had flirtations and dates galore, and I don't feel undesirable.

At 48, I feel like I'm finally, at long last, just getting started.

Irrelevant? I'm supposed to drift into irrelevance?

Not even close.

At 48, I've returned to work that sets my soul on fire, and, because my soul is on fire with caring about it, I excel at it. I am at ease with my students in a way that I wasn't when I taught in my early 30s, and when they test me with their teenage antics, I can raise an eyebrow at them and say, "You're kidding, right?" in a way that lets them know that they can't get away with it, but that I love them anyway.

At 48, I no longer go out on dates with men who don't interest me. I know who I am, I know what I like, and I know what I'm worth, and I can't be bothered with dating for the sake of dating any more; I have nothing to prove in that category. I hope for Le Grande Passion, but I'm not worried about it. It'll happen when it happens.

At 48, I've gotten political. I register people to vote. I hold meetings to discuss the issues in my home. I participate in local activities such as Citizen University or lectures. I'm not woke, but I'm waking, and I'm on fire with the desire to create equality within society, and to fight inequality when I see it. I'm not afraid to speak up (I'm not a little girl, and I've got experience, and education, so why wouldn't I speak up?) but I'm not as brash as needing to talk all the time, either, and I find the listening fascinating.

At 48, I'm reveling in these last years of heavy duty parenting. My 15 year old daughter startles me with the strength of her voice - I was not so sophisticated at her age, did not know my own mind so well, nor how to articulate my view of things - and when she reveals her strengths to me I'm overwhelmed by love and the desire to see her fly past me in life. I hope and pray that the things that held me back will not hold her back, and that she will surpass me, and that instead of this being a burden to me, it is a joy. I'm still ahead of her on the road, and I know that her life (as well as my own) will be easier if I can cut the path for her, so I'm inspired to be a model for her about what it means to really live, and in this way she keeps me young. One day she will teach me, and I can't wait to learn from her and to grow because of that, but for the next minute or two, I'm still guiding her, and having fun finding new ways to do that.

I am not as fit as I once was, but I see this, too, as temporary. Just a few years ago I was in the best shape of my life, but as I focused more on politics I focused less on exercise. At 48, I do not see this as proof of my mistakes, but rather, as an acknowledgment that one can't do it all all at the same time. This year is about re-entering education. I can run a marathon another year. I might.

At 48, my house is filled with real, true, deep friendships. I can call the people in my life that I call friends and they will come drink wine with me, or help me lift something heavy, or let me cry, or share my celebration. They hold my hand as I go for cancer testing, and then they're just as happy as I am when the results are good. These friendships are without jealousy, competition, or sly side-talk. I am included in their lives, as they are in mine, and we can go a month without talking or we can talk every day but they are constants none-the-less.

At 48, I shared my #metoo story and was released from it.

I march in the streets to proclaim my view of what the world could be. I know what matters to me, and I speak up for it. At 48, it seems, others want to listen to me. They say that I have a way of viewing the world that helps them, and they want to join me in my quest to improve things.

At 48, when I'm asked to join the committee/the board/the event, I know that I can be flattered but still say no. I know that when I say yes, I will commit with joy.

At 48, I am just getting started. I am finally, at last, free of some notions that didn't serve me. I am filled with wonder at it, that I can be so wholly myself, without a young woman's confusing lack of experience to guide her, but not yet elderly or infirm. Instead, I'm informed, excited, interested, and capable. Whether it is in the kitchen, where I whip up delicious new ideas without fear and then share them with friends and family, or in the workplace when I try new ideas and hope for the best (and course correct when they don't work), or in community activism where I take on leadership, or in parenting (where I find that I absolutely love mothering a fifteen year old because she's funny and smart and, though occasionally exasperating, she's fascinating and wonderful and I don't want to change her).

And best of all? I don't need to tell you all of this and then apologize for appearing too brash. I am not apologetic about my strengths, though I was taught to do so.

It's not perfect. Cancer + divorce = scary finances (or, as my friend B. once said, "scary-fine - I'm okay, but it's still scary, so I call it scary-fine"). I'd like to believe that there is a man out there who would make me a great partner, but I haven't met him yet, and so that makes me a little sad.

I don't have models for what middle age looks like, so I'm making it up as I go. Luckily for me, I have friends doing this work alongside me. I look at them, at us, and think that you couldn't pay me a million dollars to go back in time, even if that meant that my belly would be toned and that the world would see me instead of looking slightly past me. My friends and I - as well as new voices that pop up in newspapers and, on lucky rare occasion, film - are finding our way, in a new way, in uncharted territory.

Middle age is awesome. It's better than it has ever been in my life, and nobody told me this was coming. I was told to be afraid, to fear my irrelevance, to shrivel, to shrink.

Middle age is for growing, and I'm growing. The sky is the limit, and I'm just getting started, and I am making my own rules.

I have a great deal more to say on this topic, but I'd like to hear from you. What is your experience of middle age? How do you feel about being middle aged? What middle aged stereotypes do you encounter? What startles you about middle age? And - most of all - what are your suggestions for navigating middle age with some zest?

I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for reading!