It's autumn now. The leaves are changing color. The weather is brisk. Well, actually, the weather is warm and humid, but that's just a mid-Atlantic thing. We always have a few false starts at autumn. Hopefully it will come back to us soon. So... "The leaves are changing color and the weather should be brisk"!
Anyway, some would say that at 50, we enter the autumn of our lives. They see summer flowers dying and grass browning and reflect that their lives also are drying up and winding down. Well, everything in life can be looked at in a 1/2-full cup or 1/2-empty cup scenario. I like a 1/2-full cup approach:

• My body sags more, has a few more aches and pains, etc.,  but it functions pretty well. I'm  healthy and mobile. 
• I used to turn guy's heads;  now they relate to me more as a fellow human being.
• I used to feel that I must be a success in my career, now I define "success" differently.
• My child is grown and doesn't depend on me anymore, but I can serve and grow in other areas.  (Besides, I think she still needs me - at least a little!)
• I've forgotten much of what I learned in college, but I've learned so many things since then that I never would have learned in college.

God's definition of beauty is a lot different than the world's.     Heather Whitestone

i can't remember my niece's name!

Peri-menopausal brain-freeze, becoming a muddle-head or a mush-mind, whatever you want to call it, kind of sneaks up on you. After turning 40,  I began to forget computer passwords at work, misplace those darn reading glasses even more, forget why I had entered a certain room, (or why I had left it for that matter).  Something was very wrong. Was it early-onset Alzheimers, dementia, or a brain tumor? I'm serious - I was really scared.  I had always been fairly "sharp", on top of things, and generally quick-witted. Now I was having trouble remembering simple things. What on earth was going on?  The brain lapses weren't constant, either. Sometimes I functioned just fine, but at other times...

One day at work, I was daydreaming, (I did that occasionally). I was thinking something about my niece, and I could picture her in my mind, but I could not remember her name! This was my dear, beautiful niece, my first niece, my goddaughter, for crying out loud! I knew mid-life could bring about the dreaded hot-flashes, increased moodiness, decreased libido, whatever. But I had not expected my new traveling companion, "old foggy-brain". He visited quite often during the following years!

back to 40 and Cal Ripken

It doesn't really hit home until you put it in writing. Soon after turning 40, I was in a doctor's office filling out paperwork for a chipped ankle bone, (Have I mentioned anything about being more clumsy as I got older?)  Anyway, I had to actually write in the number "40" for my age on the form.  Well, that did it. I started to flip through the index cards in my mind, looking for anything to ease the pain. I suddenly remembered something.  Something wonderful! The Iron Man himself,  Cal Ripken  ,was born in 1960, just like me!

YES!!!


And he wasn't in his easy chair watching video clips of himself. 40-year old Cal was playing professional baseball. Hah! Not warming the bench waiting to retire his number, either. He was still knocking it out of the park and setting records. And he was 40, too. So there.  Not over the hill yet.

10 years ago - the big 4-0

The long slide into "50" began about 10 years ago right before I hit that other infamous landmark - the 40th birthday.  That one was bad enough. The sound of it smacked of "middle-age" and I thought of its previous association with  my parents and my friends' parents. It seemed absolutely ridiculous to be associated with me!

First indication of trouble ahead: I started to have trouble seeing the computer. I cleaned my contacts over and over again - no improvement. Hence my visit to the eye doctor. He confirmed the onset of far-sightedness. According to him, it was just  "something which happens when we hit 40". I never went to him again. ("Hey mister, I wasn't 40 YET.") 

To appear reasonably fashionable and still young and "with it", I purchased unique and colorful reading glasses. I was only kidding myself. I was indeed slip-sliding my way into being one of the "older women" at work. To make matters worse, I found myself:

• Flipping my glasses on and off at meetings (just like the older ladies and gentlemen in management did - and we thought that was funny)
• Leaving my glasses behind at my desk and not being able to read a darn thing I'd brought with me to the meeting (but pretending to)
• Losing my glasses all over the place at work and home (I seem to remember my mom having a problem with that.)

And so it began.

the birthday

Not horrible, not great. Just another birthday.  My angst had been worked out in the year or two before the actual event, and I had made peace with the "awful 5-0".   (Well, maybe not all the angst had been worked out.)

Still I didn't walk out on a ledge and I didn't stay in bed with the covers over my head.  My birthday fell on Thanksgiving and was a fairly normal holiday.  It's not the particular day we dread anyway. It's the reality of aging and changing and personalizing the thoughts we've previously attached to that age.  Like "Oh, man, that's REALLY old".