The sharp focus of a 50th birthday

MELONE E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times
published September 17, 2002

Once upon a time in my life -- the easy, irresponsible college years -- I believed nobody would graduate after my class, of '74. We were the brightest, we were the ultimate, and best of all, we were 21.

If you had said we were smug, we wouldn't have known what you were talking about.

We had careers to build, adventures to be had. We expected life to fulfill us at every turn. Getting older? We were too busy to think about it.

Thirty came. People around me started marrying and having babies.

Forty came. I married.

But 50? That was a number that had nothing to do with me and never would.

Don't ask me to explain the source of my skill at self-delusion. Don't ask where the years went. They piled up and up until last weekend, when they added up to 50.

Some birthday.

I'm not complaining. I got flowers and gifts and even the boss crooned happy birthday. Somebody gave me a dinner party.

But 50 is more benchmark than birthday.

At 50, you become eligible for free checking and a subscription to Modern Maturity. Johnny Cash is on the current cover. Getting older now has its own yuppie spin. Looking at Cash, you are to conclude that getting older is cool as well as inevitable.

Your friends start talking up Botox. A couple more years and you get discount tickets at the movies.

Thanks but no thanks.

Oh, but it's not so bad.

Some glimmer of wisdom comes with this birthday.

When I was 12, as was also the case when I was 21, I believed that the way I saw the world was the way it was, that my vision was true as a photograph. I also believed time moved slowly, that life was an accumulation of second chances to recover from my bad luck, my heartbreaks, my stumbles.

Now I see differently.

My perspective depends on where I'm standing, and it shifts with each step I take.

I play a different role in my small part of the world.

I used to be the youngest person in the room at work. Now I am surrounded by younger people -- who treat me, at least now and then, as an expert. They come to me for answers. They'll never know how much this surprises me.

I don't think of myself the way I apparently am. This is the wrinkle in getting older.

You feel one way. You appear another. You are permanently dislocated, like the 70-year-old man who will say, when he's talking about women, that he feels like he's 35.

You see yourself as though you're at the top of some hill. How did the years it took to get here fly so? Will the rest of your time run just as swiftly?

I can handle my looks changing; if anything, the great glory of getting older is finally coming to terms with yourself, no matter the shape you're in.

It's the speed of life now that bothers me. Time now runs fast, not slow. There is too much to do. I am running out of second chances -- to write that book, to see Tibet, whatever.

It's as though I can't take in every detail, see each moment clearly and absorb all its richness. I want to slow down, memorize and hold on to every detail of the view of the life to come.

-- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3402.

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