50 Schmifty, or The Olga Effect

I heard an interview last week with the author of a book about Olga Kotelko, a 95-year-old woman who, at age 77, and after never doing any organized athletics other than softball, decided to start running track and field. Over the next 18 years she competed in 11 different events and still holds 23 world records for women in her age group.  I am a runner who didn't start running consistently until 14 years ago, when I was 36, but at the time I thought I'd better start running while I was still young enough and that I surely wouldn't be able to run for very many more years. Hearing about Olga really threw me for a loop. All this time I've been running and thinking, "I'm so glad I can still run--who knows how much longer my body will hold up, because I'm soooooo OLD!" And then I get the Olga reality check and my whole world view goes out the window.  Because if Olga can start sprinting and high jumping and throwing hammers at age 77, then I suddenly have no excuses.

I mean, really, who's to say that I don't go back to school and start teaching English again? Or that I don't start to work full-time and become some super fit 50-year-old personal trainer who helps thousands of pounds get shed every year? Or that I don't start making dozens of quilts per week and wandering the streets of downtown Colorado Springs distributing them to the homeless? Or that my husband won't quit his job and we go off to be photographers/freelance writers in Nepal? Or that I decide to write a Beckett-esque existential American novel about a 50-year-old woman who can't decide what to do with her life and spends the entire 400 pages standing at a crossroads waiting for something to happen?

Well, let's hope I don't do that last one. For all of our sakes.

Anyway, the questions I find myself wondering about the most lately is if, at age 50, I'm not nearing the end of my life's journey, where else do I want to go? What path do I want to follow? What do I still want to learn? Where do I want to serve? This sort of lost feeling reminds me of how I felt in college when I thought I was making decisions about the rest of my life, and that once I made them, there was no turning back. Of course, now I know that was nonsense.  We get to make these decisions all the time. So while I don't know the answers to these questions, I continue to look and listen attentively for answers to my whispered prayers for direction. And in the meantime, we continue forward.

A few days before my 50th birthday in August, I was sitting by my mom's pool with pen and journal in hand,  enjoying the summer sun and thinking about the upcoming big day. Here are some of the thoughts I recorded that day:

• 50 is just a number, a quantity of the number of  years I have been alive. It says nothing about what I've learned or done or who I am or where I've travelled or who I've loved.
• That said, I do feel my body getting older. My hearing is going. I'm having problems with my teeth. When I wake up on most mornings, my back hurts. Blah, blah, blah. 
• But I can still run and work out and sweat. I can hike mountains and take long walks. I can sing and hear the music of Mozart and feel that music deep inside me. I can taste the flavor of summer peaches and smell roses and honeysuckle. All of these things are blessings I still enjoy. 
• My biggest blessing, though, is the love I feel for my family. I've known my parents and siblings for 50 years. I've known Joel and his family for almost 30 years. I've known my children for 19-24 years. These people are all precious to me, and my relationships with them are more valuable than anything else in my life.
• Except God. He has been there for me through it all--through early loves and heartbreak, through fear and loneliness, through a miscarriage and a stillbirth, through the death of my dad, through disappointments and emotional challenges and personal physical and emotional triumphs. He is my rock that is solid, immovable and constant in the midst of the ever-changing circumstances of life.

So while I don't yet know the exact direction that the next 50 years of my life will take, I know that I'm with the right people, that I'm loving the journey and that I welcome whatever blessings and lessons that God will send my way.

Here is a picture of my 49-year-old self

And here's my 50-year-old self, a few days later--proud of my new number

"What do you do?"

I’ve been in Utah this week and have had the great opportunity to see some friends from college and from my childhood who I haven’t seen for many, many years. Our catching-up conversations have been fun and interesting, but over the course of the last few days, I have been asked this question several times: “What do you do now?” Though they don't usually intend it this way, I feel like, people who ask this question are asking if I’ve published a best-selling novel, or if I’m a company CEO, or if my son has become president.

But since I have done none of these things and have instead lived a pretty ordinary life, I have hesitated for a few seconds before answering. Usually I explain that I was a stay-at-home mom, but that all of our children are now grown. But I’ve also realized that doesn’t really answer the question. I do have a job, of sorts--I am a self-employed personal trainer--but that currently only takes up about an hour and a half per week, so that doesn’t really answer the question either. I’ve been trying to come up with some other answers for the next time I run into an old friend who wants to catch up on life, so here is a brief list of some other possible answers:

• I sew quilts (in whatever spare time I have).
• I binge on TV series on Netflix (usually only while I’m sewing, but it depends on how compelling the series is).
• I am the ward Relief Society president (this takes up varying amounts of time).
• I am planning a wedding.
• I am training for a half-marathon (this will be over in a month).
• I travel--with Joel whenever I can, and to see family.
• I tell myself that I am finally going to organize all of my closets, my recipes, my quilt patterns, but I never do (obviously this only takes up a few microns of my time).
• I spend a lot of time thinking about food, mostly trying to pre-think my food choices so I can stay on the healthy bandwagon.
• I make lots of lists, because I have a healthy addiction to good pens and small, portable notebooks, even though I have a perfectly good iPhone with a notes app (which, admittedly, I also use to make lists, but I don’t enjoy it as much).

So that is, generally, what I “do,” though I think that people only ask that because it's what's socially acceptable to ask. I've decided that people who were truly my friends don't really want to know is not what I do, but if and how I’ve changed from when they used to know me. “How have you changed since I last saw you?” would lead to a much more interesting conversation, I think.

This year is brought to you by the number 50

Taylor is engaged!

My initial reaction was with the exclamation point (actually, several of them). We have come to know and love Taylor’s girlfriend over the last 10 months and are so excited for her to join our family. They were both smiling ear-to-ear when they came back from what will now be known as their “engagement tour” of the Garden of the Gods.

Taylor is engaged.

After about 30 minutes of rejoicing, all of a sudden I understood what the sentence as a statement meant--I am old enough to have a son get married. Wow. It’s like that first moment when as a teenager I fully understood that I was going to die one day. Having my first child on the threshold of marriage has spotlighted (with all the intensity and glare of an interrogation) what the past 20 years of hair dye has tried to hide--I am getting older.

I will also turn 50 this year. Normally I don’t start thinking about my age until the beginning of August, just a few weeks before my birthday, but now I seem to have a sort of morbid fixation on the number 50 in the back of my mind at all times. That fixation shows up in the following thoughts:

“I need to finish cleaning out my closets and get rid of stuff I don’t need anymore (because I turn 50 this year).”

“I should make myself a Christmas quilt this summer (before I turn 50).”

“I need to lose 10 pounds before the wedding (because I turn 50 right after that).”

“I should enjoy running while I can (because I turn 50 this year).”

I also find an increased amount of stress to make my activities matter because I have this over-exaggerated sense of impending doom. You know, that my days are numbered from here on out. Logically I know it’s just paranoia, that life really is just beginning, but for the moment I feel like I’m being pursued by a shadowy number 50.  

Last night I had a dream about being on a snow-covered road with snow piled high along the sides. As I looked closer, I saw lots of red rocks showing through here and there in the snow and realized this road was familiar, like the many national parks in Utah that we’ve been to, and yet unfamiliar at the same time. And then I began to notice holes in the snow along the roadsides that showed a terrifying drop below and I realized that what I had thought was a safe valley road was actually a precipice road along the top of a vast rock formation. Upon waking, I thanked my subconscious for terrifying me once again and illustrating my fears for me. Now that I know what those fears are, I can hopefully face them with more clarity and understanding.

Truly I understand that 50 won’t be so bad. Most of my favorite people (my parents, my siblings, many of my friends) have turned 50 without any real drama and have shown me how to accept and embrace the march of time, so I will do my best to emulate them. And I will keep to the road and hope for some spectacular views along the way.