- Grateful Dead lyrics, “Uncle John’s Band”
Fifty is the new 30, said my local best friend, Stacey Powells, who helped organize a party for me at Rafters in Mammoth on Wednesday. She is also responsible for the Princess cup pictured above. Since I met her in June, 2008, she has taken to calling me "Princess Catherine." I really have no idea why since she is the Leo.
Stacey turned 50 last July but almost didn’t make it because of a diagnosis of cancer the prior year.
“I feel very lucky to have been on the planet for 50 years,” she told me. “Being 50 is the new 30 for me. I take every day that I wake up above ground as a blessing.”
Though I didn’t have a mid-life crisis at 40 and the idea of having one at 30 is ridiculous, I admit I began freaking out a bit after turning 49 last Valentine’s Day and it’s been an angst-ridden, tick-tock roller coaster ride ever since.
For it is impossible at the half-century mark not to look in equal measure at a past lived with few regrets and a future yet to be shaped, and to know that unless I live to be 101 like my beloved great-grandmother, I am more than halfway through this amazing adventure called life.
On the other hand, my life could have been taken 17 years ago when, on July 1, 1993, a lone gunman armed with automatic assault weapons entered the law offices where I worked in San Francisco and took the lives of eight people and then his own.
As fate would have it, I wasn’t on any of the floors where the shootings took place that afternoon. But a 30-year-old law intern from Colorado, David Sutcliffe, with whom I’d ridden on the elevator after lunch, was killed - just an hour after telling me how he looked forward to exploring the beautiful city during his summer stay.
That massacre – something none of us woke up considering as a possibility for the day – was a critical awakening for all who survived. None woke up thinking, “I might die today.”
So when the SWAT teams liberated us from our hiding places and police completed their interviews, we headed out of the offices where we embraced everyone we knew with feelings in our hearts that I can’t put a word to today.
“If you have any dreams, wrap your arms around them now. Don’t waste time,” said one attorney who eulogized his friend John Scully, 28, during the private memorial organized by the firm.
In time, the surge of collective emotionalism dimmed, but the meaning we would take from the senseless acts of violence that day would endure – to live life mindfully and gratefully, to practice kindness, to follow your bliss.
“We don’t all get that kind of a life lesson,” my mother says today. “Life is so precious.”
The following year, I backpacked over Paiute Pass into spectacular Humphreys Basin for several days. Even though the grueling plunge down Pine Pass on the way out nearly destroyed my knees, my dream of finding a way to live in the Eastern Sierra was planted then.
But first, I left the legal field and pursued my long-standing dream of being a writer. Then both came true two years ago when I moved to Mammoth.
Now, as I look forward to celebrating my birthday with mother, sisters and friends at my favorite desert inn near Joshua Tree, I’ve reached an equanimity about this half-century milestone. Every day above ground has long been a blessing, and I have committed to remaining young at heart and enjoying all the summers of my life.
“Fifty is the new whatever you want it to be,” Stacey wrote in her birthday card for me.
A slightly revised version of this story ran in my "Cat's Clause" column in the Mammoth Times on Feb. 12.
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And now for some photos from the party.
Here's everyone. And my apologies to some folks who didn't wind up on the invite list. And Anita Hatter is forgiven for bailing at the last minute. From the left: Sue Morning, Randee Levin, Lara Kirkner, Jarrett Smith (in purple), Tiffany Henschel, Lynne Blanche (February 11 birthday, and giver of my fabulous fur hat), Neal (Randee's husband), Dan and Stacey hidden behind me, Andy Rostar, Erick Sugimura, Wendi Grasseschi.
Here I am with Sue Morning, who celebrated her birthday on January 29 so I made her wear the tiara Stacey got for me. Sue is one of Mammoth's best photographers and has a heart of gold.
Some of my Mammoth Times colleagues (with Tiffany taking the photo): Andy Rostar's hand holding champagne on far left, Erick Sugimura (an excellent copy editor and the patience to tolerate even my silliest jokes), Sue on the phone (always needed by someone in her family), and me looking a bit hammered though I really wasn't. Champagne courtesy of Rafters' owner Jim Demetriades, who brought over yummy Italian pink bubbly. Thank you, Jim!
And here's Andy, production manager for the Times and a terrific colleague. He is also a fellow Deadhead and, along with Tiffany, gave me my very first loaded iPod. Wow!
