50-something: the between years
September 20th 2008 19:55
Have I got this right - are we 50-somethings all alone?
When I was 10, I could tolerate playing with little, single-digit kids. So long as they didn't get in the way too much. It seems to me that late teens and the 20s had plenty in common, as did late 20s and the 30s.
From there the empathy seemed to grow: a gathering of anywhere-30s to anywhere-40s was an entirely comfortable thing. Or so it seemed to me.
And then I turned 50.
(And then I turned 55 where, for the all-too-brief-moment, I am encamped.)
I'm trying not think of myself as newly old, but I'm not being very successful. The old-in-waiting perhaps?
A few years ago I finally admitted to myself that I am no longer young, although it was an admission that had to be dragged out of me, kicking, screaming and wailing like a poltergeist looking for its mother. But now, an alarmingly small number of years later, I am asking myself if I am old.
I am feeling isolated. Suddenly, 40-somethings seem distantly young. And, worse, I have no understanding of the world of 60-somethings. It's an alien landscape to me. It might help if I knew some people in their 60s, but I don't.
I feel like I know my parents' generation better: a host of jolly 70 and 80-somethings who get a kick out of comparing aches and creaks. Almost all the really contented people I have ever met are in this age group.
A year ago I fell in love. I was 54 and she was 50. She was only newly 50-something, but I can't tell you how important it was to me that she had reached 50. She had been through the build-up, had the party, done the thing. She'd felt the heat, survived the day, found a way over the barrier.
We are a bridge, we 50-somethings, between the new and the old. We've left the one, and we've not yet arrived at the other. Right now, I have a need of this close-knit group. My under-50 friends remain warmly important, but I feel a singular empathy with anybody aged in their 50s.
No longer young. Not yet old. But closer to the second. The old-in-waiting.
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