So exactly what do you call an aging woman who owns a rafting company with her husband and dabbles in interior design on the side? Ugh, ME. Instead of being the “young one” who helps to celebrate my friends’ old geezer birthdays, I’M THE ONE that turns 50 on Wednesday. I could call myself middle aged or even a half-centurist (I made that word up and that's OK because I will soon be older than dirt) but I truly don’t feel like a 50-year-old, over-the-hill, broken-down codger. Worse yet, I looked up “over-the-hill” in the Thesaurus and got more depressed. Words that describe people like me (or me in two days): stricken in years, withered, shriveled like a prune, papery-skinned, doddering, mummylike….come on….mummylike?!?
Better, I prefer to be known by the interior design term Mid-century Modern (McM). I like it because it sounds classic, cool, forward thinking, and most important of all—STILL RELEVANT. I think that might be the biggest issue. I am still germane. I am still in the game. I can still get it done (but can I remember what it was that I was suppose to do?!?)
McM, that’s me, baby. Born smack dab in the middle of this design movement era, I fit right in. They say McM is organic in form and less formal in style—yep, me—I wear cotton socks and sometimes Birkenstocks. And, they say that the Mid-century style has “natural shapes”—again, me (and getting more natural and shapely by the year!)
So my vote, come Wednesday, is for a new-age label. None of this “one foot on a banana peel and the other in the grave” or “overripe” or “past my prime” or “just days from the marble orchard.” 50, it’s the new modern...
