space crone already, who am I kidding?
I turn 50 next Tuesday and though normally I’m proud of my age, I’m dreading this birthday. I keep having humiliating dreams that I’m a backup dancer for Beyoncé until she finds out my age. Or that I am an assistant for Tracee Ellis Ross until she learns we’re contemporaries. Or that–I shit you not–my adult sons Eric and Donald Jr Trump give me a back-breaking purse of chain mail and human skin to celebrate the occasion. Bone-chilling stuff.
Then there’s all I haven’t achieved. I’m okay with the no-kids, no-partner thing, though it would be a nice change to have a relationship with someone I trusted as much as I loved. But the real headline is that I still haven’t published a book; [title redacted] is not even fully revised. And it bothers me so much that I still can’t afford real estate–that the seaside cottage of my dreams is more elusive than it’s ever been since the economy is in tatters and I’m in such a precarious place professionally and physically.
Both my shrink and my spiritual mentor say the transition from puella to space crone was bound to be jarring. That I am confronting incontrovertible realities about space and time–not to mention myself–and that my body is bearing the brunt. I don’t disagree.
But what’s bothering me most is that, between my back healing so glacially and the nation in full pandemicoup, there’s no way I can celebrate the way I’d like. I’m a huge believer that what you do on your birthday sets the tone for a whole year–a whole decade, in this case. But I can’t repair to the mermaid woods. I can’t go to a Broadway show. I can’t spend the afternoon in 
a movie house shoulder to shoulder with strangers. I can’t go dancing in a sweaty happy club. I can’t have a boozy dinner party, and I can’t hug all the friends who have helped me get this far.
Know what I can do, though? I can go to sleep that night knowing a far better person will occupy the White House the next day. For that and for so many other reasons—including, honestly, so many of you–I am massively grateful.
