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Facing Fifty - The Countdown

Truth Thursday

On August 15, 2012, I turned 49½.  The only time I have thought about half birthdays since I became an adult has been in the daunting half-year prior to a decade changing big day. From that moment on, much to my husband’s annoyance, I tell people that I am already the age I will be six months hence. It really feels that way, and it helps me prepare for the shift.

So I am now 50. Sort of. I'm not really liking the sound of it. At 30, I was sad about the end of the long downward spiral from adolescence to adulthood. At 40, I was terrified of being older. And now, barreling into 50, I am dreading the feeling of being on the other side of the life arc, starting the inevitable slide downwards.

But if my 30s and 40s are any indication, I have a feeling that my 50s also will wind up being immeasurably more wonderful than I can imagine.

A close friend, who has been waiting for me to join her on the other side of 50 for a good six years already, has told me that the 50s are otherwise known as the “screw you 50s” (not really, but I can’t write what she actually said - and it was quite alliterative.) She told me that once we – women – get to be “women of a certain age” as the French like to call it, we no longer give two hoots what other people think. We dress the way we want to dress (and more comfortably), we say what we want to say, and do what we want to do.

This all sounds good. I told her that there is a part of me that feels like I had already reached that plateau earlier in life, when I was faced with incalculable tragedy. Something about facing the worst thing you can face that makes you realize how much of the daily bull you can ignore, avoid and push away. It strengthens you, makes you bolder, eliminates insecurities, and makes you understand what’s important.

But this sounds a bit different. Because no matter how much I learned about life from sad events in my mid-30s, I was still only in my mid-30s. I still had my 40s to conquer, and conquer I did. My 40s were the time where life goals clarified (and some were realized,) friendships solidified, my work and family and life balance seemed to strike a mostly harmonious chord. I knew my priorities, and having that map to guide me helped me make the right decisions about most things.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Therapy Tuesday
Photo by: Julie Bindeman

It's that time of year...football season. And whether you like the game or hate it, it is undeniable that it is an American obsession. Weekends across the country are dominated by football. On Fridays, it's high school. Saturdays is college, and Sunday and Monday night is Pro.

For many people, it is difficult to understand the appeal of the game. Eleven grown men running around a field trying to knock the life out of the others?  It's a scary "sport" and even being a fan isn't necessarily a safe past time. Recently, headlines in the news cited the dangerousness of football, long after one retires. Concussions, dementia, and early death are just some legacies of a Pro.

Concussions are a scary thing. They can be innocuous. Symptoms can be subtle. Guidelines are sporadic and there aren't any comprehensive ones in place. Locally, in Maryland, legislators had seen possible regulations around the idea of "returning to play"--when a player is eligible to go back to the field. In many high schools, this occurrs when a medical professional "clears" them. This is where the difficulty comes: what factors do you look at to "clear"?  Behavior? Physical symptoms?

Concussions occur when the head gets hit, sending the brain, which is encased in fluid, rocking against the skull.The initial aftermath can vary: someone can feel disoriented, dizzy, they may pass out, or a variety of other symptoms. Because the brain is fragile, this shaking can have long-lasting impressions. Multiple concussions have a likelihood of causing emotional dysregulation and can even led to suicide, when no signs seem to indicate this outcome.

With all of this danger, why does the sport continue to thrive? I think that the simple answer is that football is the American modern equivalent to gladiators fighting. The Roman Coliseum has long been closed, but every Sunday, in a stadium with cheering crowds, men go in to do battle. Just like in Roman times, these mass spectacles enable the masses to have an acceptable place in which to be aggressive. In some ways, it is the proximity to greatness that is so alluring. The athletic feats that some of these men accomplish are truly inspiring.

Most of us live ordinary lives, with little excitement or glamour, and most of us are perfectly content to settle into our average-ness. It is things like football, celebrity gossip, or things of the like that allow us to step out of the mundane and for a few moments, live a different life, even if most of it occurs in our imaginations.

 

Herbal Abundance: Using Your Potted Bumper Crop

Meal Monday

This year, for various purposes of home renovation and landscape redesign, I had to uproot my kitchen garden and put all my perennial herbs and my fraises des bois (wild strawberry) plants in aesthetically pleasing plastic pots from Home Depot.

And guess what, dear reader: they grew more abundantly than ever before. So abundantly, in fact, that I am now racing the overnight change of seasons we've just experienced in New England to use these herbs before they die of the cold.

I am not inclined to cut bunches of herbs and hang them upside down all over my kitchen in the hope that they will dry before they rot. Although that is certainly an option for the suburban herbalist.

The Clipping Service - Or How I Turned Into My Mother Without Really Trying

Truth Thursday

Anyone over, say, about 40, who has worked in the non-profit world remembers the clipping service. It was an off-site newspaper reading service that your organization would pay to scan all the relevant media every morning to see if you or your issue was mentioned. In the early days, the service would literally cut and clip the articles and messenger them over to your office so that you could be as up to date by midday on the issues of the day as possible. 

The communications department would then copy the best articles and circulate them around the staff. Sometimes there would be a cover sheet, and the initials of everyone in your department with a place to check your name after you had read the attached articles and sent them onto your next colleague. 

Of course, the rise of online media turned the clips into links, and everything became much easier. Today, my communications department wakes up at 6:00 in the morning to get the news from Israel, and by the time I get to my computer by 6:30, I have links to any relevant and late-breaking news. The clipping serivce still exists, but everything is electronically delivered.

I am a bit of a Facebook addict, not only for the updates on friends’ lives and comings and goings, but also for the recommended reading. In many ways, Facebook is like a giant clipping service, offering up an array of articles throughout the course of the day that have been vetted by friends and colleagues.

If anything, Twitter is a condensed Facebook in this way, clip after clip after clip, recommended by people I have chosen to follow. And on Twitter, you don’t have to see cousin Elaine’s cute meme of a cat or yet another praiseful prayer of life.

Years ago, long before the ease of hyperlinks, my mother was the original clipping queen. I still have a large cardboard box filled with many of the articles she sent me over the years, from college through to young adulthood and after I married and had kids. The articles she sent me were almost exclusively from the the New York Times, her primary reading material. And even though I was (and am) a pretty loyal Times reader as well, she still managed to send me those things that I had missed, and in which I actually was interested.  

You Got to Do What You Got to Do and Sometimes that Means Takeout

Meal Monday

I've spent the last 36 hours reorganizing my kitchen -- every cabinet, every drawer, every countertop. On top of that, school starts tomorrow, my husband is out of town and my sister-in-law and her family dropped by for lunch.

Time for takeout. I'm all for homemade meals as often as possible, but sometimes it's really nice to go out and be served, have someone else do the dishes and just go back home. Other times, it's nice to swing by the local supermarket for some takeout (see above photo of our sushi lunch), sit in the backyard in ratty old clothes and eat. And then throw it all away. In the recycle bin, of course. 

It was so good! Happy Labor Day everyone. Don't work too hard.