Fifty-five is the age of reason. Here you are: you've been on this earth going on six decades. Surely you've solved something. Fifty-five is the age of silver streaks in your hair, of last-minute rebellions from the cubicle or from the bedside, of sunsets seen from the tops of sand dunes with a murmur on the breeze that can't believe you're fifty-five. What the hell?
If you did it right you have a little cash, occasional sex (your partner is fine wine, if you believe it), maybe a kid or two. Fuck the picket fence and lazy politics; you're simply there, halfway content, realizing you'll perish just as well as the president and the perv. You're spending fifty-five onward either being okay with that or fighting it from the dusty dashboard of a rental van as your silver hair flits out the window you've cracked about an inch. You stare down the storm ten miles ahead on the highway, gray as charcoal against a backdrop of sky, and you say "no no, me me, I am still young, you gray fuck."
Fifty-five and you've got a coffee table you really like and can't get rid of no matter how hard you try. Fifty-five and you drink booze not cocktails, some days not Fridays. Fifty-five you accept you never wrote that book, never tried playing bass, never made it to Manhattan. But you did kiss Daryl Whatshisface, you did reduce a white wine sauce, you had your sacred moments. Thank god.
Fifty-five and your little boys are trying their best. One's boosting up kids, one's running routes, one's got his first deer through the heart. Fast death is good death.
Fifty-five and you're together. You aren't great but you aren't terrible. You're in one piece.
Fifty-five should be visiting your mother and she can’t remember who you are, which is acceptable since she’s the old one. But no: your mother’s memory is fine. She’s the one visiting you at that strange, ineffable line between here and there.
Fifty-five and you've been hoodwinked, Mom! You get drunk because drinking isn't serious, life isn't, and you're not.
Fifty-five and you've beat the world.
Unless you’re Angela Denise, born January 27, 1967 in a small town in Iowa, the panorama of a good life splayed in the watercolor air above your newborn eyes. If you’re Angela Denise, the world beat you. And there isn’t much to say except to quote Vonnegut: "So it goes."
