Happy Birthday To Me

It's not a milestone. I'm turning 55. But I'm rounding the corner to old (not now but soon) and I'm vowing not to fear it or pretend it isn't happening.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m turning 55.

This was me at my 50th birthday.

We had a big party. It was 2019 and it seems like forever ago (it was the “before [covid] times,” after all).

It’s going to be much quieter this year. Who cares about 55 anyway?

Me! I love birthdays. I like to mark the moment! I loved it at 21.

Here’s me turning 21.

And I love it at 55.

That said, 55 is not a milestone. I will mark this moment by spending the day with my husband, taking a walk, grabbing a glass of something at our neighborhood pub, then going for dinner at a fun Mexican restaurant (I love a margarita) with our youngest children.

I fully recognize I’ve got fewer years ahead of me than I have behind me. That’s just reality. No way I’m living until 110. It’s not sad. It’s just true. And if I get to 85 — 30 more years — I’ll have beaten my life expectancy by over 6% and I know I will have crammed a lot in. I will have lived a very full life. And I’ll be very grateful.

This may all sound kind of morbid. Jen, stop! 55 is the new 30!

No. 55 is 55. I’m a happy and healthy 55. I’m in love with my husband, I have 4 great kids, I’m making a film that I care about and I’m about to launch my own business/brand which I also really care about and am enjoying getting off the ground.

I look ok, I guess. I weigh less than I have in decades, I can still do a split, I have very little gray hair (but I still cover it up), and I indulge in some wrinkle smoothing Botox on occasion.

And I’m still 55.

It seems obvious to say such things. I mean, no shit, right? But we also seem to collectively live in a warped reality about aging.

We think if we get enough plastic surgery, have enough IVF and have enough kids in our mid-40s, if we lean towards youthful positions on social issues deferring to our kids even when they say the craziest shit, and work out enough to “stay young” that we can actually beat it. Beat what? Death, of course.

Well, we can’t. There is only one way out of here. And we all go out the same way.

If you want to pretend 50 is the new 30, go right ahead. If it makes you feel good and energetic and excited about the possibilities in store, do it! Just don’t actually believe it.

50 is still 50. 50 still means you’ve got about 30 years left if you get to enjoy a good long life.

55 means I need to be very honest with myself about the fact that I won’t get to grandparent my younger kids’ kids for very long. If at all.

There are so many issues that emerge when we fail to deal in reality about aging.

Women/couples wait too long to have children, long past the point of natural fertility. It is not sexist or ageist to say women’s fertility begins to decline sharply at 30. That’s just a fact. We need to live in that reality. And choose accordingly.

I had my two younger children late in life and believe me, it was expensive! I didn’t wait because I thought I’d be fertile forever. I had my two older kids in my early 30s. Easy peasy. I just happened to get divorced then meet my now husband who didn’t have children yet, and we wanted them together. So we had them. With assistance. Anyone who believes that Janet Jackson actually got pregnant at 50 naturally is a moron.

Next up about aging: my favorite subject — covid.

During covid, we were served a lie that everyone was at equal risk for serious illness and death from covid when that was far from true. People in their 70s have a mortality rate from covid that is 3000 times higher than that of children. 75% of covid deaths are in those aged 65 and older. But we had to pretend we were all equal. Why? We didn’t want to make old people feel . . . old? They didn’t want to admit they were old? Who knows. But it led us down a terrible path burdening the youngest and least at risk the most, an ethical inversion the likes of which I hope to never experience again.

Public health officials persisted in their incorrect messaging (misinformation? disinformation? lies?) toggling between everyone is at risk from covid! and if you don’t want to keep your kids locked at home not getting an education to protect the elderly you’re an ageist and a eugenicist! (No one seemed to notice those two assertions were in conflict.)

Just no. To all of it. Children should never be sacrificed to protect the old. Old people die. Many died from covid. And pneumonia used to be called the old man’s friend.

It seems to me that part of what drove covid lockdown hysteria/policy was not accepting that old people get sick and die. That we get sick and die.

We somehow have come to believe we can beat death. We cannot.

Here’s another problem with denying aging. All too often old folks don’t plan ahead. They pretend everything is just fine. Until it isn’t. My grandmother eventually fell down the stairs in her house in her mid 80s and broke both her arms. Her daughters had been begging her to plan ahead, to move out of that house, to make plans for her Down syndrome son who lived at home and who she cared for. She refused.

So then, she fell. And her daughters had to make all the plans. Quickly. She went to a rehab facility, my mom and aunt found a home for their brother, and then, eventually, my grandmother moved into an apartment/assisted living facility. And she loved it for about a decade until she died at 96. A good long life. But she could have planned better, accepted her age, and avoided the rush and chaos of a forced move. It’s not the end of the world, but it would have been the realistic and grown up thing to do.

When we lie to ourselves about aging, we distort our faces with plastic surgery and fillers and all manner of ridiculousness which only makes us look ashamed. Not young.

When we lie to ourselves about aging we burden others who have to pick up the pieces when we actually age. Or we burden very young children with shielding us from illness during a pandemic. And they are left to pick up the pieces in their own lives, which may be forever altered.

When we lie to ourselves about aging we make having kids much more difficult and perhaps miss out on being parents. And even if we are successful in having kids we miss out on being grandparents. We deny ourselves these joys and we deny our kids (if we can have them) the privilege of having parents for a good long time.

Why do we do it?

Well, increasing secularization is part of it. If you don’t believe in any sort of after life (and I don’t), leaving this place seems much scarier. Because there is nothing else. I still think it’s worth it to live like you mean it, enjoy your time, love until your heart feels like it’s going to explode, do what you love, speak the truth, treat others with kindness, don’t lie and go out peaceful and proud.

But if you only believe in the material world, you cling to it, because there’s nothing afterwards. And nothing is scary.

Furthermore, with increasing medicalization for all manner of everything, we think we can beat anything. We can transplant organs, never feel pain, never feel sad, change our sex, live forever. We aren’t constrained by our bodies. Or so we’re led to believe.

Except we are. We’re being sold a line of bullshit by the medical establishment and Big Pharma and the whole kit and caboodle. Men can’t become women, they can’t breastfeed and you can’t live until 125.

Your body will break down and it will suck. And you’ll keep on keeping on until you can’t anymore.

I intend to live in reality. Which means I’ve got another 30 years if I’m really lucky. And not all of them will be what I consider “productive” (I can be a bit of a workaholic) but they can be fulfilling, spending time with my children and future grandchildren.

I intend to plan ahead. I won’t be living in my house filled with stairs forever.

I’m not going to murder my face with surgeries and fillers so I look like the freak show that is Madonna — 65 and ashamed and kind of scary and not at all the effortlessly cool iconic rebel I fell in love with in 1983. (Wouldn’t it be actually cool and rebellious if she just looked 65?)

I will accept my age. I won’t be embarrassing, or I’ll try not to be. I won’t be ashamed of aging, an entirely natural process that EVERYONE will experience if they are lucky. I’ll try not to annoy my kids. But I’ll want to see them whenever I can. I won’t burden them with demands. I will try to be helpful to them as they have families of their own. I won’t be grumpy or I’ll try not to be. I won’t take all of my anxiety about aging (yeah I’ll still anxious!) out on my husband.

And I won’t stop living. I won’t stop trying. I’m starting a business — a brand — now, at 55. I plan to run it for a good long while. I won’t stop learning. I won’t stop working out. My joints hurt more than they did 5 years ago, but I can still manage a good 5-7 miles a day on foot. I won’t stop moving.

I. Won’t. Stop.

But I will accept my age. And be grateful I’ve managed to collect this many years, parent this many kids, and enjoy so much love and good fortune.

And I will seek to keep right on going. Until I can’t.

Happy birthday to me.