Our tiny cottage has been caught in the frigid grasp of Old Man Winter for months now. His icy breath penetrates every nook and cranny, seeping into our very bones. The spring equinox arrived without much fanfare, just an incipient thaw that seems to have frozen mid-trickle. But change is coming. The light is different, quicker and clearer, and the cold air is scented with a damp optimism. Anticipication mounts, becoming almost unbearable. Before we surrender entirely to the frenzied bacchanal of spring, let's take a moment to give the Old Man his due.

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First things first: Thank you all for commenting on my last post. It's wonderful to see you all come out of the woodwork! The winner of Amy Chaplin's At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen: Celebrating the Art of Eating Well is "eb" (Elisabeth Bentz). Congratulations! Please send your mailing address to me at gluttonforlife at gmail dot com. I can't wait for you to start cooking from this beautiful book!

With the change of season, my thoughts inevitably turn to death and dying. What? you cry. How maudlin! And I can't deny that it's with a slightly melancholy turn of mind that I watch the garden wither and decay, for this is such an evocative reminder of the passage of time. Oh, spring will come again—the rhubarb will poke its gnarled pinkness up from the cold ground and the lilacs will bloom in a purple haze—but my own spring's awakening happened long ago and my winter years are soon upon me. Reading this piece by the wonderfully wise Dani Shapiro, I was comforted to know that I am not alone in wanting to acknowledge the inevitable, and to let that open me up to appreciating the moment even more. It's so important to embrace all of life's experiences. If we bury our heads in the sand and allow ourselves to by ruled by fear, who knows what we might miss out on?
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A lot of things converged recently to inspire this post. My friend and colleague Justine Clay, a coach for creative professionals, was kind enough to feature me in her new blog series about people over fifty. I also read this article in the Times. Then I discovered this amazing project. And I had lunch with Kristin Perers, creator of this wonderful blog. I think no matter what your age, you spend some time and energy dealing with the cultural, physical and emotional repercussions of what that number signifies. Little kids are anxious for the freedom and autonomy that comes with age. Teens grapple with raging hormones and those "awkward" years. The twenties are about experimentation. In our thirties we feel pressure to settle and achieve. (Of course this is all gross generalization, but work with me.) Then things get a bit nebulous. If you have a partner, kids and a career, your forties and fifties must be about that, right? But what if you don't? And what about your sixties, seventies and eighties? Your nineties? (Too optimistic?) Who even talks about those decades? In the culture at large, there is so little conversation about what it means to be vital and creative and truly alive all the way to the end. So much of the focus, especially for women, is on how good we can look for our age. What about our accomplishments, our creativity, our grace, our strength, our sensuality, our talent, our humor?
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Today I am 50. It seems somehow inconceivable and yet it is merely the inevitable outcome of staying alive. (Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.) I’ve done more than that though—I’ve lived. And, as the inimitable Édith Piaf sang, Je ne regrette rien. I learned to play the oboe. I lived in Spain. I graduated from Harvard. I made my way in New York City. I moved to Los Angeles and back. I married 3 times, divorced twice and was widowed. I traveled the world. I found true love and married again. I bought a house in the woods and 5 acres on a lake. I started this blog. There have been some admirable achievements. There have been some spectacular flameouts. Much has been lost, but even more gained.

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It has been a challenging week. My husband had surgery on his leg on Tuesday, to remove the steel hardware that repaired the shin bones he shattered in a motorcycle accident in Indonesia in April of 2011. Compared to the original surgery, this was nothing, though the surgeon did take an hour to scrape away at the healed bone in order to retrieve the 7 screws and one long plate from G's tibia. So I have no recipe for you today. Instead what I have is a heavy scarf of mixed emotions that I knit while waiting in the hospital, striped with painful memories and fringed with hope. I'm sorry to grieve you but I must unburden myself.
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"She's really let herself go." When I hear someone say that about a woman—usually in a pitying or disdainful tone—it gets my hackles up. First of all, how often have you heard this said about a man? And secondly, shouldn't letting yourself go be a good thing? Doesn't it sound wonderfully liberating? Turns out it means she's no longer living up to the stringent standards of female beauty. She doesn't tweeze her eyebrows, wear lipstick, starve her body into submission or dye her hair. She's "showing her age." To be perfectly honest, I'm usually quite careful about the pictures I post of myself, but today I deliberately chose one in which I'm not wearing a speck of makeup and in which, frankly, I look like what I am: a happy 49-year old who doesn't smoke or sunbathe, and who gets Botox a couple of times a year. Yep, full disclosure.
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