Just Past Fifty

I remember what my father told me:

There is an age when you are most yourself.

He was just past fifty then,

Was it something about the trees that made him speak?

(from Something About the Trees, by Linda Pastan)

I read this poem for the first time when it came out in 1988. I was nineteen and taking a class called Contemporary American Poetry as a freshman at Kalamazoo College, and the poet had come to our campus to read from her new book, The Imperfect Paradise. I loved the book and still do, but what did I know at nineteen to be able to approach a poem about aging and the loss of a parent: I had done neither. Instead, I asked her questions about another poem of hers I admired and could comprehend, the one about lust.

Over the years I have thought a great deal about the line “there is an age when you are most yourself.” Today, I am officially just past fifty, it’s my fifty-first birthday, and I am thinking I might be there. I know it wasn’t when I was in the abstraction of my twenties and thought I knew everything. And it wasn’t in my thirties when I had to spend years choosing between clinging onto the pastiche that had been my life or the letting go that must happen to get to what’s real. My forties I spent in bleachers and parking lots, waiting for kids to get done with whatever they were doing, though that was enjoyable: while I couldn’t be most myself, I could see so much of myself in the four kids who were coming into their identities and thriving because of me, or in spite of me, and their four beautiful souls have been worth watching.

No, I think I’m getting to most myself now, or close anyhow. I’d be okay with that. At just past fifty I have learned how to settle into love with another person, and I can feel how she is settled into me. I have learned how to let my kids be who they are (okay, maybe not entirely with Tristan, but he’s thirteen and needs the swift kick in the arse all thirteen-year olds need from time to time), but with Peyton, Emma, and Tucker, I can watch them as they struggle with knowing everything and be glad when they ask for a handout: a buck, a book, or a bit of advice. I have learned that I am not going to accomplish all the goals on that list I made in 1990 of 108 things I wanted to do in my life (Travel the world: been there. Publish a poem: done that. Get married: twice (oops!, but thank God!). See Michael Jordan play basketball in person: damn it.) I have been blessed in more ways and more days than I can count, and at just past fifty, I try not to count the blessings nor take them for granted. Just be blessed and let the blessings be. I’m one heartbeat away from calamity, after all. 

At just past fifty, I have lost a parent, and I miss him pretty much every day, but I still have Mom to warm my life with the unconditional love I have never not known.

At just past fifty I worry that our world is burning. Today, Australia has been on fire for ten days. Today, Iran launched cruise missiles at American troops stationed in Iraq. Today, a naked emperor is in the White House and half of America admires his clothes. But at just past fifty, I have learned how to push and pull the levers that make things move, at least a little, so I do what I can in the space and time I have to do it. I want a better world for those who will be just past fifty themselves someday. My work as a Holocaust educator has never felt more urgent. At just past fifty, work I care about is a fountain of youth.

Having a birthday in January means that we’ve just gone through the gateway of the year, and having a birthday on January 7 means that for a week I’ve been asked to make resolutions, and then to make wishes. The beautiful thing about being just past fifty is I don’t feel resolved to change, perhaps to prioritize, and I have too much to wish for much more. The other day I asked Loriann not to get me anything for my birthday, but instead to take me to dinner. So this evening she did, and I had tacos, and that’s the most myself thing I could have for any dinner, birthday or no.

When I was nineteen I asked Linda Pastan about the poem she wrote about lust, that brief fire. At just past fifty, I am far more interested in the trees, and the memory of my father, and a phone call from my mother that just came in, and my siblings, and my children, and my friends.

If I had known better, I would have asked her what comes after being most yourself, about the golden color that takes over the trees when the evenings lengthen in first days of fall, and the way they know how to let go when it’s time, and the cold that follows.

But at just past fifty, I have new adventures ahead. Linda Pastan published a book of poems last year, at age 87. In it she writes of dogs mostly, but also has to laugh at “the nonsense/of her old simplicities.”  At just past fifty, whether or not I think I’m anywhere, my old muse says I still have a lot to learn, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be laughing at myself for a while yet to come.