Madonna Turns 50, and Other Mindless Ramblings

Tonight is Saturday.

I have finished my long run.

I have finished working for the week.

I am now enjoying my second glass of Cab while watching mindless television.

Husband-asleep. He has to work early tomorrow, which is an oddity in our home. He usually sits up with me and enjoys a glass of Cab on Saturday nights. When you are older and you have children, you take date night anyway you can get it, which is you no longer dress up in nice clothes, enjoy great dinners where people aren’t dumping their plates on the table, or spend the evenings out.

Instead, you wolf down frozen pizza, watch a child’s cartoon for movie night, throw the kiddos into bed just as quickly as you can (they can skip one night of teeth brushing, right?!) and crack open the bottle of wine before you fall into a dead sleep.

You have to get that cork out fast, you see. You are tired. Really, truly tired to the core.

Fast forward. Or backward. Whichever way you want to go.

Get this.

Madonna is 50.

Yep, I said it. Fifty. As in 5-0.

How did this happen?

Just yesterday I was blaring Like a Virgin on my tape player. The tape broke a few times. I replaced it.

I had to. I had the bangle bracelets, the big hair. I had the att-eh-tuuuude.

I watched her date men like Dennis Rodman, and while I was not attracted to the men that she hooked up with (minus a sort of crush on Sean Penn during his Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and only because he was an angry but totally great actor), I admired her in a way.

She did what she wanted.

She didn’t care what people thought. She was young and inspired and living her life.

Now she is fifty.

It’s not that I have this misconception that I am young. I know that I’m no longer twenty. I spend about fifty bucks per month (give or take) on remedies that are supposed to, or claim to, but really don’t, cure wrinkles.

It’s not that I don’t understand that 40 is catching up with me like some stupid dog that has bitten my leg and won’t let go. I know that dog is there, because I can feel her breath on my butt. I just choose to ignore her.

Until Madonna turns 50.

Then the fact that this is the year my high school is having its 20th (as in twenty, 2-0, two decades) reunion creeps up on me. Like too-small underwear. Nagging and digging.

I go to Classmates.com and spend too many hours looking up people I have long forgotten. But I don’t pay for the membership, so I don’t get to see much.

So I google them, which takes another few hours.

Twenty years ago I walked those high school halls. Played hoops. Did a few cheers in that stupid and extremely hot bear outfit.

Twenty years, but it seems like yesterday in some ways.

How did that time go so quickly? This is the question that constantly astounds me. Once, I was young. Now, not so much. It’s not that I want to be young again. It’s that I don’t understand how it can all go so quickly.

And don’t get me wrong: I didn’t enjoy those years so much, but of course like all things, when they are over we tend to romanticize. How else would we run 26 miles and then want to do it again?

Seeing Madonna turn fifty has caused me to take pause. Today as I ran I thought about my life and about how much better it is now that I am older, and how much I thought I knew that I really didn’t know when I was younger. Madonna is fifty, I’m hitting forty, and all is right with the world.

I’m good with forty. I mean, this is where I am so how else am I going to be? I’m good with forty, I’m twice as good as I was when I was twenty, and simply looking at the women around me, including Tomescu and Torres and, now, Madonna, proves that like a great Cab, as we age, we only get better.

Just check her out now:

If I look that good in ten years, then I’ll be at my reunion with bells on.

Then again, probably not.

I’ll leave you with song.

If this one doesn’t make you get out of your chair and sing and dance, you must not have grown up in the eighties! (And how many cans of Rave did she spray on her hair that day!)