I turned fifty-one today.** It’s a sobering number, 51. When you turn fifty, there are celebrations. You get your AARP card, your discount card to certain department stores. “Oh, you look good for fifty”, they say. They sell special napkins and cups and balloons for fifty. There was even a character on Saturday Night Live who was excited about being fifty…”I'm Sally O'Malley, and I’m fifty!” You can really get into that 50th birthday merriment! But nobody celebrates 51. Fifty one is when you come to the realization that your life is over half over. I mean, realistically, how many more years do you have once you reach fifty? It’s not the middle, or at least I doubt that it is. I am not planning on making it to 102. I suppose that is a possibility, with modern medicine the way it is, but I really doubt that I will make it to that century mark.

I have a few regrets in my fifty prior years. Most of them deal with my mother, an uncle, and an ex-husband. But my biggest regret is not meeting my beautiful wife 20 years ago. I regret that I will not have as much time as I would like to have had left to spend with her. There are so many things that I would love to have done with her. For instance, we have a lot of traveling we want to do…we have even thought about buying an RV and traveling, but I don’t think I’ll be up for that if we don’t do it pretty soon. Roughing it is for younger people who still have good backs. And some of the things we want to do would make me look pretty ridiculous. I mean, in less than 20 years, I’ll be seventy. I’ll be really slowing down at that point, I think. She’s still young (nine years younger than me), and she still looks young. I, on the other hand carry too much weight to look young. I don’t have gray hair, and not a terrible amount of wrinkles, but still I couldn’t pass for too much younger. Let’s see the two of us at a punk rock concert. I would look like someone’s grandmother trying to be cool. See what I mean? I really don’t want to be responsible for freaking out multitudes of teenagers or twenty-somethings.


I have been thinking about this for a while. I need to get more active. I know that. Maybe this birthday will be just what I need to make me get off my big rear and get moving. (Actually my rear isn’t the problem, it’s my big stomach that’s going to kill me.) Activity would help me lose this weight, strengthen these bones (like I have said before, I’m a hip just waiting to be broken), and help my heart work better. I see older people who are active, full of energy. I can do that too. Maybe by fifty-two, I’ll be a whole lot healthier. I’ll work on it, and let you know how it turns out. Wish me luck!

** OK, I admit that I did not tell the complete truth in our profile. It just seemed easier to say “two dykes in our forties” than “one of us is in her forties and the other is fifty”. Forgive me for taking liberties with the truth.