This Friday, April 21, I’ll be 50 years old. Fifty and single.
I never really thought about that until now. It never occurred to me that I would hit the big 5-0 as a widowed single Mom.
To be honest, there’s a part of me that feels like – dare I say it? – an old maid. A spinster. Just to be sure, I looked up the definition of “spinster” and this is what Webster has to say about it:
Spinster – an unmarried woman and especially one past the common age for marrying.
Well, that does describe me, doesn’t it?
It’s not that I’m into labels, especially not ones with a negative connotation. It’s just that, when you achieve certain “landmark” ages, you almost can’t help but consider where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going in this finite life of ours.
There’s an extra clarity at these times, as though your ability to observe your own life becomes momentarily sharper. This clarity is causing me to marvel at the striking discrepancy between the reality of my life and my youthful expectations for it.
I thought that things would be a lot different than they actually are.
I expected that my husband and I would be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary next month; instead, we only made it to 15. I expected to be working for the same company I’d been with since I graduated from college; instead, after 20 years, I accepted a severance package and left there eight years ago. I expected that my son would grow up with two sets of loving grandparents; instead, he lost them all before he turned 11.
Most of all, I expected that my son would have a father.
Since expectations are essentially things that we take for granted will happen, maybe it’s better to arrive at the place in life where we no longer take anything for granted. I think so. In hindsight, it seems immature and almost foolish to count on anything in life. But I guess that’s what we do when we’re young and things have always gone our way. Why wouldn’t that simply continue?
I want to be clear, though, that I’m actually very happy with a number of things that didn’t turn out as I’d expected.
I’m enjoying my “second career” as a freelance writer and editor. I’m thrilled with my sweetheart, who loves me in a tender yet passionate wway I’ve never known. I’m happy with my “unconventional” life, in which I work at home, my son goes to school at home, and we share our home and our love with an assortment of cats, dogs and birds.
So I’ve looked at where I’ve been and where I am. Now what about where I’m going?
As I ponder that question, my first thought is, how can I think about where I’m going when it’s impossible to know where I’m going?
Of course we can’t predict the future. But we can thoughtfully consider what we’d like to see happen, what we want for our children and ourselves, and then live our lives in ways that make the future we envision possible. We can plan realistically and with hope for tomorrow; and instead of living for tomorrow, we can treasure today.
Yikes! I’m sounding so mature now, aren’t I? That scares me. “Maturity,” I suspect, is a euphemism for “old.”
On the other hand, as it turns out, I’ve learned so much more from the things I didn’t expect to happen in life than from the things I did. So all things considered, I’ll take the wiser 50-year-old single parent I’ll be on Friday over the naïve 35-year-old “double” parent I used to be any day.
And I mean that, you young whippersnappers!