The Year
of 50
Facing 50 as the road grows shorter, your hair thinner, and your life in many cases more spectacular.
Introduction
I recently hit one of those milestones in life that make the people around you get a little too excited while leaving you a bit unsure. I turned 50. That elusive age we spend our whole lives thinking will never come until one slow evening three months before, it hits you. Wow, I’m going to be 50 in three months. It was my first big milestone since turning 30, and I had been so preoccupied with work through my 40’s that the whole half century thing really snuck up on me. I went into a reflective period giving myself a little time to find meaning in a path well travelled and the path that lay ahead. My only reference for such an event came from my father. When he turned 50 his friends referred to it as the BIG 5-0 and paraded the number around by making Big 5-O posters for his party as they sloshed down colorful drinks I couldn’t pronounce. They roared practical jokes for a week, and sent gag gifts ranging from photos featuring people leaning on canes to plastic statuettes of fat men standing on broken scales. I sensed that this over-celebrating was possibly more out of fear than thinking 50 was truly over the hill. People seem to react differently to milestones; some finding refuge in a bottle while others enter the world of botox claiming that 50 is the new 30. I only knew that I would have to be different.
As my own BIG 5-0 approached, suddenly the days ticked like an antique watch and I decided I was going to spend the actual “day” with my wife, mother, and best friend at the coast. Although the number didn’t intimidate me, making it a half century does represent a very real slap in the face concerning your mortality. By this phase of our lives, most of us have dealt with the death of a parent, a friend or family member dealing with cancer, and even old athletic wounds reasserting themselves after decades of silence. So 50 brings a set of self-reflections that may be embraced or ignored. For one, the idea and tradition of celebrating birthdays loses its appeal. When I was little, I had the most fabulous birthdays at the Portland zoo with carloads of friends tucked in tight polyester pants with chocolate smiles tugging at colorful balloons. The parties involved games, boat rides, and mountainous sugar cakes that imbued me with a healthy sense of exploration and adventure. I wanted to be a paleontologist and illustrated two books for our home library by the first grade. Later, I would go off to work at a horse camp in the Arizona desert, paddle my way to canoe camp in the UP of Michigan, and spend four years as a field archaeologist with projects in Italy, Oregon, and Arizona. I floated through the years, and the candles on my cakes became more torch-like as life whittled down my friend list to a precious few. So how could I make my 50 new? How could I use 50 to reinvigorate my belief that life was an exploration?