Turning 60 has its advantages.

My 2002 Volkswagen Cabrio, with nearly 50,000 miles on it, is starting to show wear. The two-door chassis still has plenty of life in it but the car is dirty, scratched, missing a hubcap, and that little “check engine” dashboard light comes on sporadically for no discernable reason. I plan to take the once-sporty automobile for a tune-up and thorough cleaning when the odometer turns its next four zeros. When I bought the red convertible in my early 50s, my family joked that I was having a mid-life crisis vehicle. Now my car is having its own mid-life crisis.

I, on the other hand, am over the angst of what I insist on calling my middle years. Today is my 60th birthday, and I’m comfortable with being a sexagenarian. As I begin my seventh decade, I am intent on preserving the experimental person I was in my youth.

At 30, I still believed I was indestructible. I was a D.C. private eye targeting corporate accountability. At one point, another woman investigator and I had a hot pink business brochure that blazed “We’re Not Charlie’s Angels”-a marketing ploy which landed us on the Sally Jessy Raphael show. I was a single mother who paid rent, bought food, and understood the economics of supporting myself. I once drew a profit and loss statement for my precocious 8-year-old to explain exactly why we would not be buying her designer jeans.

Me: Here’s what Mommy makes. This is what we both spend. Here’s how much is left.

Her: We’re poor?!

Me: No, we’re middle class. People with even less money than us, they’re poor.

Her reaction was to develop a taste for vintage clothing. Life gives you coping mechanisms.

When I was a child, in the 1950s, women at 40 were “matrons” or “spinsters” and regarded as “middle aged.” Feminism, Title IX, and the post-World War II economy changed both perception and reality. By the time my cohort hit our fourth decade, we felt as if we were just beginning “our prime.” I had a high profile job as a Senate investigator, a teenage daughter, an infant son, a novelist husband, and a small real estate empire of inner city properties. The decade flew by in two- and four-year increments filled with kid drama, job drama, husband drama. I changed to an even more demanding career—network TV news producer, weathered a race riot at my property, and lived through a couple of unrelenting renovations at our wooded suburban home. I also started to color the new and not-so-welcome gray strands in my dark hair and reluctantly succumbed to the necessity of regular exercise.

Youth, like innocence, evaporates both gradually and all at once. Children, so keen on their own progression, notice the changes first. One Saturday morning, at my neighborhood YMCA, I was on an exercise bike that had moved to a corridor during remodeling. I was pedaling intently in striped leggings, listening to a CD, and writing something in my notebook. An excited little boy ran down the hallway ahead of his infant-toting mom and stopped short at my side. Just as his mother caught up, he informed me loudly: “You’re not like my grandma.” He meant it as a compliment. But still, he was the first person to refer to me as a “grandma.”

Expensive skin and hair products can’t cure everything. At 45, I had breast cancer. My treatment was aggressive and the disease was controlled. But chemotherapy causes instant menopause, a side effect my oncologist forgot to mention. When I hit my half-century mark, a friend assured me that 50 had become “the new 30.” But by then I had a substantially weakened immune system and considerably less estrogen. Thirty I was not; age had now become a part of my identity.

Lately, when I get together with friends my age, we talk about our elderly parents. My father died when he was 58 so, in my mind, he is younger than I am. My mother is 84 and, thankfully, still well. She and her 89-year-old husband are, so far, independent. All my life, I had a complicated relationship with my mother. I struggled to be individual but still craved her approval. As a girl I emulated her and as a teenager, I ignored her. As a young woman, I strived to outperform her. Then I had a daughter myself and it started all over.

Tags: 60th birthday party, aging

Bonnie Goldstein Trained investigator, experienced mother and beginning blogger.

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