I can't be. There is no way. No how. I just grew out of puberty...okay, so that was 20+ years ago.

When I started to listen to Jennifer Deer's essay about getting old... not being able to sleep properly (yes, I woke up at 5:30am this morning for the 2nd time in a row and no, they aren't beating me in the office) and not being able to handle more than one glass of wine... I started to think 'OH NO, that's ME!!!'

Which is why the piece made it on the air, of course. (cont'd)

I identified with Jennifer. I don't have lots of grey hair, a few stragglers. Lines around my eyes have prompted me to buy $50 wrinkle cream. It's working. Someone at a party this weekend told me that I look younger than the last time she saw me.

So is age just a number? I wonder.

Age is a state of mind and do not let others tell you if you are old or not. It is none of their business. I take 10 years off of my real age and tell NOBODY my REAL age. That is between me and God.

Nice site!

Holly

I recently mentioned to a younger colleague who wanted to take me out to lunch, that she should wait a couple of weeks and take me out for my birthday. I told her it was my last year in "this" decade. She thought I meant my 4th decade, making me 49. I meant my 5th. When I told her I'd be turning 59 she was visibly astounded! It makes me happy to think people don't recognize me as approaching 60. However, I am so proud of that fact! I don't look or act "60" - whatever looking and acting that particular number means. If 60 is the new 50, then I am the poster child for 50! I love the person I've evolved into, I love the knowledge I've gained about myself and the world in recent years. I feel liberated - no longer worrying about what people think of how I look, how I dress, what I say. I don't think of myself as being middle-aged for surely I am not going to live to be 120 years old. But I like being able to observe younger people, knowing the fascinating journey they are on, and older people, hoping that I too will attain old age with grace and lucidity!

Phyllis,
Do you think you'd feel as upbeat if you actually looked 59 or even older than your age? Would your attitude sustain itself wihout pride in your physical looks as a pillar of that attitude?
I'm 46 and I am really wrestling with all kinds of emotions about beauty, age, mortality,...
When people think I'm younger than I am it definitely makes me feel good. But as that happens less and less, will I be able to form a new identity and maintain a positive age-defying attitude?
I agree with Holly that age is a state of mind. Getting into the right state of mind is what I'm after.I guess I'm scared that my attachment to physical looks is so strong that the wonderful state of mind you exist in will always remain at arm's length from my grasp.
Do you wrestle with the types of feelings I experience from time to time?

Carolyn

I just listened to Jennifer Deere's commentary on turning middle-age and I must say I found it rather silly. Listening to a young woman bemoan turning 40 would be laughable if it wasn't so tedious. Being 38, 39, 40 is not being middle-aged. It's still young adulthood - the waning days of young adulthood perhaps, but young adulthood nevertheless.

No, middle-age starts at 46. Yes, you read that correctly, 46. It's subtle but definite and irreversible. How do I know this? Because I'm 46 and it just happened to me.

I'd been listening for it for a couple years but I didn't hear that tiny but absolute 'shift' take place until some weeks after my 46th birthday. (I think I was on a treadmill at the gym at the time). Surprisingly, it had very little to do with the things Ms. Deere mentions in her essay - gray hair, wrinkles, a general physical slowing down. Examples all around us demonstrate that these things vary a great deal from individual to individual. We're all acquainted with people who may be the same chronological age but look and act years apart. I had a friend who was slick bald in his 20's and an aunt whose hair was still a deep, natural auburn at her death in her 70's. I myself, was having a good day on that treadmill, thank you very much. No evidence of physical decay at that moment at least.

Instead, middle-age arrived for me with the sudden realization that life...MY life...was truly finite. A certain number of years had brought me to this point in my journey and a certain number more would most certainly bring me to the end of it. There are not, as Linda Ellerbee put it so beautifully "an infinite number of summers". This wasn't a new idea exactly. It had wandered in and out of my thoughts many times before. But this time it stuck. I saw and acknowledged it in a real way - at my core.

Of course, in our youth obsessed society this realization is, in itself, almost a death of sorts. Similarly, Ms. Deere builds in a sort of defeatist Catch-22 toward the end of her essay: if you're over 40 and aren't freaked out about being middle--aged, than you most irredeemably are middle-age. Apparently it's a most damning state of being in Ms.Deere's view. Thankfully, most days, it's not in mine.

Hey! I turned 59 today! January 3, 2006. I woke up and said, "Thank you God, I'm still here." Yes, there is evidence of a little gray and there may be a few aches and pains, but generally I feel great. I have been told that I look 10 years younger. Flattery will get that individual everywhere! My philosophy - "I'm glad you asked." Be happy and do what you can to make everyone whose path you cross happy. Life is short!