Fire Woman

I like to joke that my walk-on music is “Fire Woman” by The Cult.  It’s a song which commands attention and in my rich imagination it would make Middle School students sit up and take notice if this song is blasted when I enter the room. 

Reality is that Middle Schoolers generally do listen to what I have to say and the most use I get out of “Fire Woman” is in the parking lot at Costco on a Saturday, when “Fire Woman” at high volume helps me to summon the courage I need to try and back out of my parking spot, amidst the carts that have been abandoned and the wandering shoppers strolling through the parking lot to the store, drunk on excitement about the 72 rolls of toilet paper they will soon bring home. 

Internet, this is what 55 looks like.

Let’s Have a Chat About Glasses

I first needed help for my eyes when I was in my early 20s.  For a while, glasses for night time driving or while watching a movie would do the trick.  After a few years of decorative glasses that I thought made me look studious, wearing my glasses all the time meant better vision.  Decorative glasses were fun; full time glasses were not.  I took up with contact lenses.  Over the years, contacts and I were BFF and I never envisioned (pun intended) giving them up.

Then my mid-40s arrived and my eyes felt more and more dry in my contacts.  By the time I was 48, contacts and I had to break up.  It was either that or pretend I didn’t mind uncomfortable red eyes that looked like I’d been on a bender or in a sandstorm, events that seem odd (or inappropriate) for a school teacher.  Plus, I’d reached the point where reading in my contact lens required reading glasses.  I read a lot and so this became stupid.  Reluctantly, I gave up contacts and began wearing glasses full time.  I invested in a pair of prescription sunglasses and prepared to make my peace with the new me.

Though I like the way they help me see things, I don’t otherwise enjoy wearing glasses.  Even after nearly four years of wearing them daily (and more than 30 years of needing them!), I don’t quite recognize myself in glasses.  I am incredibly picky about frames and nine times out of ten I end up disliking the frames I’ve selected, having concluded that I look foolish or fuddy (even though no one has ever actually noticed that I have new frames).

I realize that all of this makes me seem rather vain.  So be it.  A few weeks ago, I got new frames.  I loved them at the shop but now I feel the stripes are silly.  Reality, however, is that no one can see the stripes and the frame shape is like every other frame I have ever selected.

Sometimes, I exhaust myself.

At 50K

In less than two weeks, I will wake up and be 50 years old.  

50.

T reminds me that it’s just a number.  I remind myself that it beats the alternative.  Part of me is simply bemused by the development.  I suspect that one of the secrets of life is that there is always a tiny core inside of you that feels 17.  Hair turns grey, joints age, comfortable shoes now seem fashionable…..in every way, you have aged.   But your inner 17 year old is still there, waiting to grow up, driving a little too fast, and playing the music a little too loud.

It’s a station wagon that you’re driving too fast.  The music is from 1988.  But still……

50.

This is me at nearly 50.

I like the black and white version better.   It covers a variety of sins.

It’s been two years since I broke up with contact lenses and I still don’t recognize myself in glasses.  My hair is long because why not?  I don’t have any makeup on because I am lazy on the weekend.

50.

I’ve decided to take the approach I’d take to a car with 50,000 miles.  The new smell is long gone, but there are plenty of miles left on this journey. And time enough to get after it.

November 6

Today, I turn 49 years old.  My last two weeks of feeling like death on a cracker make a birthday seem especially sweet.  In the past year, I’ve made peace with my need to wear glasses instead of contact lenses and generally embraced the fact that aging has its virtues.  Mine include grey hairs……lots of them.  But I like to think that I’m holding my own at 49.

My weekend has been a relaxing combination of time spent withT and JT, two of the nicest blessings in my life, and an assortment of the things I love most.  I had a couple of extra naps.  We went out to supper and watched some Longmire episodes on Netflix.  There were great presents from people who know me well and love me anyway.  I set out November decorations on my front porch, read a good book, and planted some tulip bulbs in anticipation of the coming spring.  There was chocolate cake.

In years past, my birthday has fallen on election day.   That’s always felt fitting and this year we’ll celebrate again on Tuesday.  I’m crossing my fingers and toes that it’s a celebration of a most hopeful sort.   I’m a patriot, a woman who named her only child after a president, a teacher of American history who still cries every year when I read the Declaration of Independence out loud with my students.  I know that my nation is not perfect but I believe in the promise of America.  We are a diverse people who can do great things when we work together.  As I head into my 50th year, I’d dearly love for it to be a year of working together in an America with hope as its central value.

Two more days.  Let's do right by one another, America.

4-8

When JT was born, I remember thinking that when he graduated from high school, I would be 50 years old.  Those notions — an 18 year old son; a 50 year old me — both seemed so far off in my future.  But life has a way of passing time much more quickly than you expect and the cosmos certainly has a sense of humor when it comes to middle age, where the years don’t just pass quickly, they fly by.  So here I am with 50 in my sights.

Today is my 48th birthday.  Earlier this week, in a conversation with my 7th graders I revealed my age and student A said, “adults don’t tell their age…..you shouldn’t do that,” and I laughed and said some adults keep that information private but that I don’t think it matters.  Being 48 gives me the confidence to make my own rules.

That is my wisdom about the world: I’m finally getting to a good sense of what matters to me.  48 brings wrinkles and grey hair; it brings sore knees and crummy eyesight.  But it also brings self-awareness and the ability to laugh a little more often; it brings knowledge about which problems are real and which ones are just really annoying.  48 seems to come with a reminder to stop live in the moment.

I sometimes joke that if I had this knowledge when I was 12 I would have enjoyed the 7th grade a hell of a lot more.  Instead, I try to give my 7th graders and my 15 year old son a little perspective, aware that their journey is theirs to travel.  I embrace my many blessings in life and say “yes” as often as I can.  And I look in the mirror and marvel that I’m a grown up.

5-0, here I come.

Four Eyes

I first began to consistently need glasses when I was in my early 20s.  I didn’t really mind wearing glasses, though I never recognized myself in the mirror when I wore them and I missed peripheral vision.  Extended wear contact lenses became my solution —— I loved them for the peripheral vision they provided and I wore them all day and all night with nary a problem.  As my 20s disappeared into my 30s, wearing contact lenses was sometimes a challenge.  Not much, mind you, but enough that I gave up extended wear lenses in exchange for monthly disposable lenses that I took out each night.  

When my early 40s arrived, my eye doctor suggested that contact lenses would be more of a problem as I aged, with dry eyes becoming an uncomfortable reality of daily living.  I denied that this was a problem for me, though I did become more careful about selecting glasses.  Over time, with better-quality glasses at hand, I began to wear my glasses more and more often.  Sunny days always meant contact lenses so that I could wear sun glasses outside.  But on cloudy days, I’ve become increasingly likely to skip the contacts and wear my glasses all day long.  The more I wear my glasses, the more I realize that peripheral vision not withstanding, I can see better in glasses.  I’m still surprised when I see my face in the mirror, but hey, who isn’t sometimes surprised when they realize they aren’t 25 anymore?

A few months ago, T suggested that I would enjoy prescription sunglasses.   I deferred, claiming them to be unnecessary.  But the idea had been planted and more and more often as I put in my contact lenses in the morning, I’ve come to wish I simply had prescription sunglasses at hand, so that I could skip the discomforts of a long day in contact lenses.

And now you know where this post is headed.  I’ve finally gone out and obtained some prescription sunglasses.   I still don’t recognize myself in glasses but dang, I can see very well when I wear them.  All of this is just a way of admitting that  I’m 47 years old and just now starting to use my common sense on a regular basis.  So that's promising.

On Aging

I am notorious for ignoring my aches and pains (even when I shouldn’t).  I power through discomfort because I usually can and because that’s what needs to be done.  For years this habit served me quite well.  But I am a middle aged woman these days and I am starting to realize that very fact.

Last winter I developed a sore hip but it was sore in a weird way.  At first it ached only when I was sitting or laying down.  The hip was fine when I was standing or walking.  At the time, I felt like this was just my kind of pain and I cheerfully sped off to the gym where I worked up my usual sweat on the elliptical.    The aching continued and so did my daily gym trips.  Then, about a week into this arrangement, I could barely get out of bed, let alone walk downstairs.  Walking, sitting, and lying down became unpleasant.  I was in pain and actually frightened by this development.  So I headed off to the doctor who diagnosed bursitis, prescribed me some serious anti-inflammatory meds, pointed out that I am aging, ordered me to stay away from the gym for two weeks and reminded me that I may need to start taking it easy on occasion.  This was unwelcome news.

However, the pain was sufficiently frightening that I did actually take the ordered break from the gym.  Since that incident, I have been forced to recognize that I am human and that sometimes powering through is just not a good idea.  

If this is the wisdom that comes with age, I’m not always convinced that it’s worth the exchange.  I am fine acknowledging my age, letting my hair go gray, and living with my wrinkles.  I’ve been a fan of sensible shoes for years.  But it is the idea that my physical durability is finite that scares the hell out of me.  Since I’m prone to over-doing it, it may be that dialing things back and simply working out and living within an appropriate range for my age and moody joints is an adjustment that will solve this problem.  In fact, I suspect that this is exactly what I can and should do.  I’m realizing that anew because I’ve had a wonky knee for the past two weeks.  I know that taking it easy is the right approach.  But it is an adjustment that I find exceedingly difficult.

In Which My Dignity Takes a Hit

Tuesday's surgical proceeding has left me with an unpleasant scrap of gauze and tape on my nose.  I'm under orders to leave the wound covered until a plastic surgeon sees it and develops a plan.  This is rather a challenge to my personal dignity.  Basically, I'm a Middle School Assistant Principal making it incredibly easy for every kid in the school to make fun of me.

Super.

The day of the procedure I was in the doctor's office awaiting the pathology results of the second surgical scrape, with a bloody bandaid on my nose.  A small child looked at me and said, "what happened to your nose?"  So I pretty much knew how my next day at school would play out.  

I took the challenge head on and wrote a quiz question on the board for each of my classes:

Ms. Sassafras has a bandage on her nose because:

a.  she picked it too much.

b.  she got in a fight.

c.  she should have used sunscreen when she was a kid.

We had a nice conversation about sunscreen and the importance of using it.  Then we agreed* that we would all pretend that I didn't have a scrap of gauze and medical tape on my nose, though I will look this way for several more days, perhaps more. 

Awesome.

*Note: by "agreed" I mean I insisted.

Stereotype

I grew up in California and my sister and I spent days in the pool, never with any sunscreen because we were the brown-as-a-berry type girls.  Also, it was the 1970s.  In my adulthood, I have reaped the rewards of this lifestyle in the form of the occasional spot of skin cancer.  It's the basal cell type; inconvenient and unattractive but not really dangerous.

This summer, I had a spot scraped off my nose.  The resulting pathology showed that the margins were still funky.  This spot would require a Mohs procedure, which is as much fun as it sounds.  I underwent that procedure on Tuesday of this week.  An 8 mm chunk on the surface of my nose is gone (as is the skin cancer).

Having casually assumed that everything would be just fine (the first scrape healed beautifully), I was rather horrified at this development.  A plastic surgeon is in order.  Conveniently, I live in New Jersey, and we are awash in cosmetic surgery opportunities.  And so I'm seeing a guy next week and now I've become a New Jersey stereotype: a woman of a certain age with a plastic surgeon's number on her phone.  I'll let you know when it goes to speed dial.