I’m 50: Notes from Midway

Two and a half months ago, I turned fifty.

Michael threw me two parties. One was with my family and friends who could be bothered to make the trek out there, out in the wild forests of East Sooke, with a wheelbarrow full of pink bubbly and photo reprints of me at various life stages placed in scavenged frames around my aunt and uncle’s property, some on trees, some on a cart my aunt likely uses at the market to sell her sugar cookies. There was a Mason jar with little bits of brown paper for people to write things for me, about me, fold up the bits and stuff them in the jar for later reading. It’s on the shelf in the bedroom, read.

The other party was at the property down in Lower Sahtlam, not Upper Sahtlam, and it was mostly the neighbours from around the block (as it were). I was amazed in both instances that anyone came. This is not a declaration of contrived humility. I am genuinely surprised when people notice me, tend to me, recognize me, celebrate me. In both cases, they did, and I walked away with gifted bottles of many red wines of good vintage and a fine sparkling wine from Cathy the Potter.

I am fifty now, some weeks after those forest celebrations. Still fifty. I don’t know what fifty should feel like, as I still feel wildly unformed, unprepared, unrefined. All adjectives will come in threes, my hat trick thesaurus.

I am fifty, and leading up to it I had in my mind a vow, like WWLIC (when we live in Canada) when we were still in Vietnam and making lists about who we could be once we landed in Canada. WIAF? When I am fifty, I’ll get my shit together. I’ll make time for art, for reading paper books, for adventure, for rest, for resetting the bad habits of my first half century.

I’m not sure what I hope to achieve. My skin will age, day by day, and my hair will grey, day by day, and I’m never going to reclaim the energy and vibrancy and possibility of my past years, back when I thought I wasn’t good enough. I often feel like I’m a ghost of me, looking out of my current physical iteration, constantly surprised to exist, to have form and substance. I have a body! And it exists in the universe! And it’s on the groundrush toward the end of sentience! Shit.

I’m fifty and I’m going to quietly write here while I figure this out.