On Being  50 and thinking about it too much --

 I  turned 50 this fall.  Many people have told me I do not look fifty.  I suppose they mean that my hair is not too gray thanks to a bit of a shot o' color and a new hair cut just before my birthday, combined with being the mother of a child in elementary school. Some how being where I am in life makes it seem odd  It is hard to be the mom of a 10 year old here in the suburbs of Maryland.  If I lived in NYC I'd be normal, here, not so much. I guess it could be the way I dress as well,  in jeans, hiking boots, casual slightly boho clothes, I am hard to place.  I don't dress like a corporate type, or like a matron which would age me too, so there are no outward clues.


Having had several people say " you don't look 50"  makes me wonder what does 50 look like? To put it finer does it mean that I don't look the way we saw 50 year olds then?   Does it mean that I don't look like 50 year old people did 40-45 years ago? Or does it mean our view of 50 has changed?  

Think about it, it is 1971 or 1976 the line between old and young is firmly drawn in many places, the  people who are 50 are our Aunts and Uncles, (maybe our parents) 2nd or 3rd cousins.The Principal at school is certainly 50 (age added due to rank), the lady next store, or the guy at the local pharmacy are the grown ups.  We don't even notice them really because we are still in kid world. Totally submerged for the most part in ourselves, our friends and our views on things which we are just realizing we can voice and do.  The grown ups may be interesting but unless they are special to us we don't think of them as anything more then a two diminsional  image of themselves, or just in relation to us as support or obstacle.  They aren't old or young just sort of in between, and the idea that they were ever like us is shocking mostly, later we realize the truth, that they might just have remembered what  it was like to be us as they looked back at us coming up behind them, never catching up fully. 


 Coming fast forward to the present, it is odd to be on the plateau now, on the flat land between the big climb from baby hood to full adult life.   It is only a plateau,  I am not finished but walking up to the next part of the mountain wondering what the rest of the climb be like. Now I am able to see  the view, both behind and ahead. Realizing more and more that there is no 50 look, no way of being, nothing to have done, beyond being myself and getting ready for the rest of the climb, knowing how much more there is to do and see, and become.