Once at the edge of a crowded Dublin sidewalk, I was waiting for the crosswalk. Just as the pedestrian light turned red, I started to step off the curb, intending to cross quickly before the traffic started. A tall man beside me put out his arm to stop me. His elbow grazed my shoulder. “The man who made time made plenty of it,” he said. I laughed, chastened with his Irish humor and forthright advice.

Turning 50 turned me both pensive and excited about time. We have plenty of it, yes.  But time is a weird part of life that we can’t ever get enough of, and yet we’re sad we have it (At least, sometimes. It’s fashionable at some birthdays to be sad about another year.)

I feel an odd mix of exhilaration and bewilderment, and the puzzling compounds when people say they can’t believe I’m 50. “I’d have guessed you about 34 or 36,” they say, and they’re right: that’s how old I feel. But numbers don’t lie, and the math says 1974-2024=50. And what do my friends really mean? That I don’t act my age? How does 50 look? How does 50 live?

My cousin’s 12-year old thought I’m younger than his mom. I can understand him. I don’t have a husband or children, which is how one’s timeline unspools in his world, so to him, I’m just not old enough yet to have a family.

But there’s something in the wider air, beyond his cozy farming community, that doesn’t make sense to me. The math doesn’t work. It’s this:

Everyone is supposed to become the best version of themselves, grow, learn, develop, be all you can be. BUT don’t grow at the expense of becoming old.

Even if we don’t want grandmothers to be dressing like teenagers, we still have this deference for youth and beauty that we’re loathe to lose.

Youth and beauty are wonderful in their time. I live and work around 20-year-olds, and I love their wit and perspectives. But I LOVE being 50 and not 20! I have much to learn and hold many questions, but these 50  years have given me so, so much that I benefit from, give out of, and I would never want to go back to a smaller number.

Some mornings, though, it’s disconcerting to look in the mirror and see more gray hair, or to notice wrinkly skin on my hands. I don’t love that, or the gap in my grin because one year took a tooth. But when I take stock of the richness of my years, I can’t resent the gray and wrinkles. And I have seen repeatedly how a plain face becomes beautiful with a smile, and I don’t think my smile has to sag for a very long time.

Partly because I think 50 is cool, and partly because I want to push against the worship of youth and beauty, I started celebrating my 50th birthday for the full year before my birthday, and past it. Because why not? I started by going to a wonderful concert in Carnegie Hall and wrote briefly about it here. I bought raspberry batik fabric to make a dress that I love wearing. I went to Greece for three beautiful weeks. I’m going to another concert with another friend in August. There were other planned celebrations, and there might be more. Someone said these were excuses to do something, but I said turning fifty is a REASON, not an excuse to celebrate.

We don’t celebrate enough. I’m sure of it. Our Germanic genes make us too efficient and task-oriented to put effort into taking time to reflect and enjoy the end or beginning of a decade or a summer or a week or an accomplishment. We think we don’t have time, but the man who made time made plenty of it. When I think about how long God has been patient with me, and how many days and years He waits to ripen His purposes, I realize that He isn’t a bit concerned about time or efficiency. Remembering this helps me calm down and breathe deep and wait on whatever He’s up to.

I’ve earned these grey hair and wrinkles. A lot of tears and weights and waiting came before them. I can still be unreasonably chirpy, but I hope I’m a little more measured and thoughtful than I use to be. Fifty years have been very kind and beautiful to me, and I am grateful beyond words.

I wrote this poem last year in anticipation of turning 50:

Nut-brown silk wrapped
Smooth over knuckles,
Gapped grin in line of white,
Silver filaments framing face—
These parts of portraits
Plot a stretch of time,
Paint my story line
Of years, quick and slow,
Rich and deep and variegated, full.

This sagging silk? That dark spot?
They show my days stacked high
Of treasures found in hummocky shamrock fields,
Incandescent faces, glowing coves,
Humming train platforms,
Quiet words and bonfires,
Endless tea and steaming curries and
Tablescapes and holding hands for prayer.

The years and wrinkles converge, collect
To sketch a picture deep beyond
Cosmetics, profile, cursory glance.
Numbers only mark a page.
Wrinkles only touch a face.
My pulse glows calm, claims this age,
And names my story
Very good.