Yesterday I had a birthday. Suddenly I am no longer 50. I am now 51.
I began to think about how I felt about being 51 and I wasn’t sure that I liked it. Fifty is such a statement age. “I am 50.” I owned it.
Now I’m fifty……….one.
I would have to say that my year of being fifty was the best year of my life. As my best and dearest friend said to me as she came to grips with her own fiftieth birthday (I am paraphrasing here as I didn’t record her exact words); “I feel like a fine wine that has been put away till it was ready. And now it’s time to drink it and enjoy.”
By god, did I open my ‘matured’ bottle of wine and drink. I drank with gusto. So much so that the hangover of my excessive exuberance is still pervading my life. I don’t want the joy of the last twelve months to end. There is no reason that it should end, or even diminish, other than my attitude to life changing and I can’t see that happening.
My reticence at turning 51 was put into perspective though when I began to edit the photos from a birthday I was asked to shoot a week ago. The birthday girl was 100.
100
A woman who was born at the end of one world war, who has lived through another world war, a depression, seen a man land on the moon, witnessed the development of worldwide communication through phones and the internet, seen the eradication of polio and is a mother, grandmother and now a great-grandmother…….
I’ll bet my bottom dollar she didn’t flinch when she turned 51.
With that I vow to keep the momentum of the past twelve months going.
I’m 51!!!