Henrietta Hay's Column

The world seems to be populated mostly by people who are turning 50 this year. This includes my younger son, several of my closest friends, and most of the movers and shakers of the nation.

What do they have to look forward to? Well, I just had my 83rd birthday and I can tell them that if they are as lucky as I have been, the second half will be pretty exciting. I have decided that if you are going to get old, get as old as you can possibly get.

We worry far too much about chronological age. Years before I turned 50 Clifton Fadiman, my favorite essayist at the time, wrote, "To divide one's life by years is to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar carries on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings."

So there. What if I did have my 83rd birthday? I did not grow a new annual ring. I just grew another wrinkle.

What happened in those years - the time it took me to get from 50 to 83? The world changed a lot, and so did I. I learned a lot.

I became an active feminist. Betty Freidan's Feminine Mystique had just appeared in 1966, when she and Gloria Steinem and several other women met in that hotel room in Washington and decided that a civil rights organization for women was needed. They wrote down their goals on a paper napkin and the National Organization for Women was born. It was an idea whose time had come, and it has defined my life since then. How old were you that momentous year?

I discovered those wonderful/frightening machines -- computers -- starting with my little TRS 80. By now I should be an expert, but the technique has moved a lot faster than I have. Now my Power Mac does all the things I want it to do, but if anything breaks down I yell, "Help."

I have learned the importance of staying in shape physically. "In shape," is a relative term, depending on where your shape has settled. But I have learned how very important exercise is to a diminishing energy supply, not necessarily for recreation but for survival.

I have learned that bacon and eggs for breakfast and meat and potatoes for dinner every day of the year is not necessarily a great idea, although I grew up believing that it was. I still get misty eyed and hungry when I think of some of the food my mother created with real heavy cream and butter and cheese and fat, marbled beef. Of course, my dad lived to be 93 on such a diet, so maybe future nutritional discoveries will be more cheerful. Meanwhile, back to my yogurt.

I have had two careers in these years, but it was not until my 75th birthday that I finally realized what I really wanted to be when I grew up - a writer. Some people catch on faster. Writing has always been a part of my life, but it is truly the joy of my ninth decade. I'm aiming at a signing at the Tattered Cover.

But best of all, with age I have regained my sense of wonder. I find myself looking at the world with new eyes, slightly blurry thought they may be physically. The colors are richer and deeper. I am more aware, more probing, more questioning, yes, more wondering. Much to my great surprise, most things are new again. It is time to watch the flowers grow and listen to the birds sing and watch babies take their first steps. It is time to start shutting down the unimportant things and to deepen my joy in the people I love and things that matter.

At 50 I knew the answers to almost everything. At 83 the answers are not so clear, but the questions are still exciting.

At 50 if you are lucky and want it, you have a whole wonderful new set of experiences ahead. In my eighties, like Caroline Bird's salty old woman, I wake up every morning wondering what is going to happen and looking forward to whatever it is.