I Prepare to Face Fifty

“I am middle-aged. Fifty is upon me. And I am faced by a grim reaper. But it is not youth I want. It is time. And there’s too little left. What shall I do about it? Shall I waste these remaining years on people who bore me, squander them on employments that satisfy no desires, sacrifice them to the ideas of others? No. I have wasted hours upon hours on nothing but waiting, days upon days on routine that led nowhere, and a tally of weeks on nonsense and so-called diversion.

“I had an idea that in middle age somehow I should reach a hill and beyond it would lie a promised land. Enough merely to be climbing up. Suddenly now I realize the crown of that hill is age fifty. And I know that if there is a promised land it has got to be in front of me. If I don’t find it now I never shall. So I had better face this fifty, acknowledge it is gone — whether squandered or treasured — forever, and plan what to do with this promised land, how to spend these last precious years left to me.

“From the brow of that fifty hill, suddenly I am beginning to compute time. Do I wish to spend so much of it in my remaining years on the pursuit of youthful looks, on this cult of youth? Perhaps I am a miser with my years, but I must confess that I can no longer see value received from pursuing youth. It will bring me no higher price for my work. It will make my husband no fonder; for affection after fifty rests on something other than complexion. It will not add to my emotional satisfaction nor to the pleasures of my mind. No, I shall not waste any of my remaining years on the pursuit of smooth pink cheeks. Nor will I waste my time or worry with weight, counting calories, or other such psychological-gastronomic engagements!

“Frankly, I do not feel the same as I did twenty years ago. Moreover, I do not want to feel the same. These new feelings — may they not be an asset instead of a liability? I will not be satisfied if my remaining years are a mere repetition of those that have gone before. I want something different. I will not spend this time in an effort to produce an illusion to myself. I will be content to look my age, to dress my age, to live my age. I will appreciate all that life has brought me. I will face fifty cheerfully.

“Do not take this to mean that I am negating its challenges. Fifty does not mean freedom from family demands nor from the things that we are tied to by duty. Fifty brings no alchemy that enables one to plan one’s life as one might try an uncharted sea. We will always have personal and financial limitations, and we can only alter our course according to the wheel in our hands, the craft under us, the shoals and currents around us. But what we may do is decide which direction to steer and how to get the maximum of enjoyment in the steering.

“I must be economical of time. Each day must count. I must plan for the satisfaction that is possible here, now. In youth, always before us was that will-o’-the-wisp, perfection, because there was always the hope of time to reach it. That it was always to be to-morrow did not affect our attitude of mind — that of preparing, improving, developing. But gradually it has been made plain to me that this to-morrow will never come, that as I am to-day so shall I be twenty years from now. Yes, I may improve or grow in that time, but it will be along the line already laid out — I shall not change my style, my type, my talk. In the difference between acceptance of this fact and the belief that ‘all things are possible’ lies the difference between thirty and fifty, between youth and middle-age. To those of my contemporaries who still look for the Prince to ride up and disclose a crown beneath his fedora, who still expect pumpkins to turn to coaches, this seems a tragic difference.

“May the acceptance of the truth of fifty bring its own joys. No longer do I need to pretend. I may say things frankly. I can accept myself as middle-aged, and therefore enjoy myself. I can squeeze the utmost out of what I am and what I have. I can relax from the struggle. I shall no longer punish myself. Instead of competing, I can create. I may choose what I like, including the colors that please me — that do something to my brain, if not indeed to my soul — rather than attempting to express the best in taste and fashion. No longer do I need to try to take everything as it comes, but select what I want. And please understand:  I am not retiring — I am attaining.”

—Emily Newell Blair (1877–1951), “I Prepare to Face Fifty,” 1926, abridged

Weighed down

the scale now shows me
one hundred sixty-eight
but in those simple digits
I see rejection and pain
sugar, laziness, exhaustion
hormones splayed out of whack
menopause ready to rumble
plaque buildup and repressions
anxiety, regret, some depression
the past, the future, sheer panic
tension, disoriented expectations
ice cream, sweet junk addictions
griefs, hurts, disappointments
bad habits, cliffs, fear, falling
the eating of all my emotions
gluttony and gorging ghosts
turbulent raging blood glucose
sleepless nights, too-busy days
nerves, toxins, worry, age
unwelcome rapid-fire change
lack of trying, trying too hard
loss of control, culinary excesses
no longer fitting into my dresses

Terri Guillemets

Alteration

she sees west
glances north
east goes past in a blur
south appears
and she wobbles —

this is not exploration
it’s spinning —
the gentle rotation
of youth
has accelerated
out of control —

middle age, presbyopia
gray hairs speed by
dizzied by menopause —
motion, sickness
rapid changes kicking
out the support
from under her

she has a stand to take
but cannot make it
she’s fallen & can’t get up
it’s too far down too fast
she needs to rest —

here she sits — still
nauseous, unsteady
invisible, irrelevant
dried-up and empty

no map, and broken
compass — vulnerable
existing inside out
with seams showing —
tired, thready, torn

Terri Guillemets

Fading in

i am naked and spinning
unmasked and repenting
wasn’t i just fourteen
mere unwound hours ago
i breathed, i sang
a lyric or two, loudly
in my quiet voice —
cycled through colors
found beautiful hues
my butterfly wings
cripplingly morphed
to chrysalis again
— reflect retread —
growing wisdom in my head
thrust out the blonde hair
and that all the new
is gray matters not —
focus is a summit reached
rock bottom at the top
perimenopausal paradox —
if someone would listen
if anyone would care
from up here or down there
the invisible i have become
could unhide everted —
but what has burned out
is not the heart soul
bones mind or gut but
only the brittle shell
of youth — falling apart
shedding and crumbling
finally wasting far away
leaving a glowing
blossom unsplayed —

Terri Guillemets

See me, hear me, I am fifty.

the world may see dried-up and irrelevant —
they may not even see me at all —

LOOK!  i’ve re-blossomed with beautiful new petals —
strength, focus, perspective, poetry, silver wisdom —

i am roaring out all that i have held in,
taken on, and put up with — for all my life —

i roar for myself and for all women
i roar at the top of my lungs with all my midlife rage —

LISTEN!  no longer can i do it all, nor do i want to —
i may be getting old, but also i am brand new —

Terri Guillemets

That dreadful moment

“Growing old… that dreadful moment when we first realize that we are ourselves no longer young. It is an extraordinary moment: pain, denial, rebellion, hopelessness. It arrives in many different ways. It used to come with spectacles — but nowadays the babe wears spectacles; sometimes it creeps upon us with a little stiffening of the joints; one does not run upstairs quite as lightly as one did. It may even reveal itself in the impatience that is felt because people do not speak quite as distinctly as they should — an impatience to which the younger generation rudely refers as deafness. These are gradual intimations that we are not as young as we were.

“There are abrupt ones — especially there is the glance into the mirror some morning, after a sleepless night. Probably every woman over forty-five has known the start of astonishment and dismay that comes with that glance… The woman who has had this slight shock before breakfast glances at her looking-glass many times that day, and always with a growing comfort, for as the day passes things change; her face is more alert, her eyes brighten, her double chin is, somehow, firmer. No; it was only fatigue from a bad night; not age, oh no!

—Margaret Deland, “The Wickedness of Growing Old,” 1905