From Hot Ticket to Hot Flash in a Hot Minute – Reflections on 50 Years

Holy crap, how did 50 years go by so fast?  And how has it been over a year since I’ve blogged?

(Side note: I’ve had a lot of kind people tell me they miss reading the blog (one reader refers to the blog posts as “little chats”) and I can’t tell you how much that warms my heart.  The truth is, I’ve just moved my multitude of words into a new endeavor and have been podcasting with my Dad over the past year on the “The Riddle of Faith” podcast.  I also help him put stories on Facebook, so all my creative energy and editing and writing have been in those spaces since January of 2022.)

As you can imagine, this realization that I’m a half century old and more than half of my life is over (if I’m lucky enough to get old), prompts contemplation, and a necessary readjustment of priorities.   I find myself saying, “If I don’t do this now, I’m never going to do it!”

And my bucket list is all over the place here – everything from starting a home youth group or sending a book proposal to a literary agent to simple things like taking a weird new exercise class or trying a sour beer.  I have done SO much in my life and if I died tomorrow, I would be the luckiest person in the world to have lived such a full life.  But I also have a lot of living left to do and I want to leave it all out there.

As I consider my luck, I also think back about how surprised my young self would have been at how life turned out.  I never could have guessed who I would become or all the things I would experience.

Yes, life turned out wildly different than expected for this wild child.

 

Physical Stuff:

My Dad took these pictures randomly one day as he was getting ready to take my brother to a baseball game and I’m so glad he did.  I never would have believed I was ever this ripped because I was an idiot and always thought I was fat (I ate like trash – but I was hyper and stayed in shape cheerleading and had a gloriously fast metabolism all the way through my 20s).  I thought all my friends had better bodies, mainly because they had bigger boobs.  (Sorry, this is probably TMI, but by the time I got to college, I was happy with my fun-sized rack and I have apologized to my girls for the years they were unappreciated.)

Back then, I always saw myself as bigger than I actually was.  Oddly, now that I am actually generously proportioned, I have the opposite phenomenon happening, where I look in the mirror and see myself as smaller.  It’s only when I see photos that I think, “Wow, I really need to eat a salad!”  But the beauty of 50 is that you have already let go of being eye candy.  I want to be healthy and I want to make sure my husband still finds me attractive, but beyond that, I don’t give a crap.  That’s why older ladies can be sassy and eccentric – they don’t care what anyone thinks anymore . . . sweet freedom!

Notice that I was wearing a mismatched swimsuit – that’s because I was a genius wearing baby oil and trying to maximize the amount of skin that I wanted to tan.  Now, at 50, I’m reminded of those beautifully tan years when I see age spots and wrinkles.  But those were fun days, so it’s hard to say I regret hanging out with my friends, slathered in baby oil, smoking Marlboro Lights (I don’t know how we didn’t set our big, permed, Aqua Net hair on fire), drinking some cheap Boones Farm (which I got with a ridiculous fake ID), listening to 80’s music, giving each other bad relationship advice, taking embarrassing photos (that thank God, could not be streamed or shared in some virtual social media world) . . . we were young and thought we were invincible.

My 50-year-old idea of a fun day would involve a bookstore and a bakery.  If we are really going to have a wild night, then take me to see a stand-up comedian or any theater show, give me a bold, red wine or a rich, fat porter or stout, and I’m one happy camper. 

My younger self would find my older self a real snooze-fest.  

Career/Life goals:

The girl in this photo – tethered to the landline and sitting in a position that says no one else’s calls are important and there will be a busy signal for a good long time, (and though not visible in this photo, I likely have a banana clip in my big, permed hair and zippers on the ankles of those jeans) – had the lofty career goal of wanting to write jingles for commercials. I applied to the only three schools in NC with journalism degrees that had an advertising emphasis.  Thankfully, one of those schools was Chapel Hill so I just lucked into going to a great school.  The journalism degree served me well and I almost went into advertising but I was offered a job at an insurance company at the same time which had better pay, better hours, better benefits, so I took the practical route and kept my writing and songwriting as a creative outlet.  At this age, I thought I’d live in Pilot Mountain, get married and have three kids before age 30 (which I thought was old).  This vision didn’t really mesh with the career goal of writing jingles for commercials, which would have required a move to a big city with a big advertising agency, but the young mind is unencumbered by incongruent goals and plans. My reality was much different (I married and divorced before age 27, didn’t even start having kids until my 30’s and that was after dealing with years of infertility, moved all over the place – CA, MO, NY– and Massachusetts ended up being the place where we would raise a family).  Now I laugh at the naïve confidence of my young self and I am grateful that life didn’t turn out the way I expected.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mom and I especially wanted to be an adoptive mom. I was around 9 years old the first time I met an adoptive family – they had a little girl from Vietnam and I remember thinking they were such an incredible family.  After that, I always expected one day I would be an adoptive mom and thankfully, I married a man who made that dream come true.  He also allowed me to stay home with the kids which was the ultimate dream – I stayed home for 18 years (which is a misnomer because we were on the go and rarely stayed home!) and reveled in it.  Parenting has been the most rewarding and most humbling endeavor of my life.

Circling back to marriage, I got that wrong the first time too.  It wasn’t husband #1’s fault – I mean, he was what I thought was “my type” and we actually had a good relationship.  But it turns out the young version of me didn’t really know what was good for me and had to make some detours before figuring out the right path.  I don’t really regret my first marriage because without the lessons I learned through that “mistake,” I wouldn’t have been ready for true intimacy.  I’m incredibly thankful for a second chance at the whole marriage thing with Keith – we have had such a fun and incredible life, and nearly 22 years later, we are still having fun and I still consider myself one lucky woman.

Faith/Spiritual Stuff:

I was a typical teen in that I thought I already knew everything, and maybe a little atypical in that my overconfidence extended to faith and the Bible. All it took was my first religion class in college to knock me on my butt and start questioning everything.  That was my first of many crisis-of-faith times – each of them has been annoying and difficult, but necessary and beneficial.  As the saying goes, the more you learn, the less you know, and I have found that to be true.  It seems like my whole life has just been a “chipping away” of any certainty.

Now, at 50, my faith has become incredibly simple and that simplicity allows for vast mystery.  I believe that God is love and that the whole deal is just to let God love us and love others through us.  It’s all a big mystery, but one that I am drawn to and compelled by – it’s both illusive and present.

Some things change; some things stay the same:

Things that have NOT changed in my 50 years:  I’m still loud, chatty, and overly-enthusiastic.  I still love big bear hugs, taking pictures, big hair, dancing, good movies and music, reading, writing, singing, laughing, discussing theology, and traveling.  I also still eat like trash and have an unhealthy love of anything rich and sugary.  At 50, my body has finally had enough of that nonsense, so I’m going to have to moderate, but I am grateful to have been able to eat whatever I wanted for all these years.  If I gained everything I ate, I would be (as they say in the South) bigger than the broad side of a barn.

Oh, and I still drive practical vehicles.  In that first photo I was washing my sweet 5 speed stick shift, Mercury Lynx hatchback (that baby survived a road trip to the beach with five girls and all of our stuff – still don’t know how we fit – it was like a clown car).  Now I drive an even sweeter 2014 Toyota Sienna minivan.  The kids were having a discussion one day about what kind of car they dreamed of having, and they asked me, “Mom, what is your dream car?”  Without missing a beat, I said, “I’m driving it!”  And I meant it.

What HAS changed in 50 years?  If I were to put it in a negative light, I’d say I’m pickier.  But in a positive light, I would just say I know what I want.  There’s also a lot of weird stuff that even 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have thought about.  For example, I carry a pillow and blanket, ear plugs and eye mask when I travel (until I was at least 35 I could sleep anywhere without all this paraphernalia). I like having a seat at the end of a row so I can get up to pee without bothering people (I fondly remember my young bladder that didn’t let me down if I sneezed or jumped on a trampoline).  I could go on, but you get the picture – getting older seems to layer on new quirks at every turn.

I would like to think that time and life experience have helped me become a better person.  I also feel like I’m better able to appreciate things and find perspective.  I know I have wrinkles and hot flashes, my joints crack and pop, I struggle to stay up past 10 pm, I am more forgetful, and there’s more of me to love these days, but it’s all evidence of a long and eventful life.  My Dad used to say that the only way to avoid getting old is to die young, so I’m trying to embrace this whole aging thing with more gratitude than grumbling.

So here’s to the gift of life, living the abundant life with God’s help, and finishing strong.