For two days of orientation, they brought us Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. People crowded around the boxes, taking firsts, then going back for seconds. “We are going to have lunch for you, let us know of any food restrictions,” the Director of the Externship Program announced. Lunch both days turned out to be Domino’s Pizza, lots of it – mainly pepperoni, with a vegetarian, pineapple, cheese and gluten free pie thrown in – all washed down with 7-Up or Coca-Cola, full strength, no diet or light. No salad or sides or anything green, barring the few shriveled strips of green pepper on the vegetarian pizza.
I am a clinical extern this year at Catholic University’s student counseling center. It is the place where university students, both undergraduate and graduate, come to discuss adjustment difficulties, depression, anxiety, relationship problems, gender or sexual identity issues, sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and myriad other problems that surface during those young adult years. The counseling center is a coveted placement in my social work program (also at Catholic University), due to the robust nature of the training and supervision afforded trainees and access to a wide range of clinical issues in the student population. Externs exit the placement at the end of the academic year fairly confident in their abilities to conduct therapy, from framing the conceptualization of the case to formulating treatment goals to implementing the intervention.
From day one of orientation, I felt my age for the first time. I am acutely aware that that magical birthday, 50, looms around the corner for me. Our cohort of 9 is a mix of psychology doctoral students and a few, like me, pursuing a master’s degree in social work. I estimate their average age to be 25.
At almost 50, I am an outlier. 25 is half of 50.
The last few years I have really looked forward to turning 50, having experienced my 40s as a period of tremendous personal growth. The 40s were so eye-opening, in fact, that I repeatedly told myself and friends, “Life just keeps getting better.” I have taken joy in daydreaming about the various adventures I would like to embark on in my 50th year, such as an African safari with my family, or maybe climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with girlfriends, or maybe downtime in a thatched roof hut in Bora Bora. I even made a guest list, in a prolonged moment of procrastination last semester, for some type of big bash that I will throw for myself. Next year will entail a year-long celebration, per my rule for decade birthdays. In year 40, I left my job and career as a lawyer, lived in a Tuscan villa for two weeks with my husband, two young children and parents, threw a birthday party for myself at Maggiano’s, and had countless celebratory lunches and dinners with friends. I milked it for all it was worth. Triumphant at having (finally) decided to leave the law, I considered my 40th year a major turning point in my life as I looked forward to all that I had yet to experience.
Now the half-centurian celebratory prospects remain, however vague and undefined. And yet, just a few days into my externship I find myself immersed in the shadow side of turning 50 and all the ways I am unlike the others in my cohort. I do not love and cherish the food they gift us (“I lo-o-o-ve sugar,” moaned the program director, licking the frosting from her fingers on another day when someone had brought in a large tray of Cinnabons). I have wrinkles, sunspots and undereye bags, noticeably conspicuous, to me at least, compared to the unlined, smooth complexions of the others. And, yes, I am old enough to be a mother to virtually all of them. One morning we had a group seminar on “identity,” in which we each introduced ourselves and shared the origins of our names. I inwardly winced when several of them mentioned their birth years – 1990 and 1996 (did she really say ’96?) – I was in college and out of law school in those years!
I look at them wistfully, my mind flitting back to when I was 25. A time of many “firsts.” I had received my law degree, sat for the bar exam, moved to a new city, and landed a temporary legal job in the pharmaceutical industry. For the first time in my life, I had business cards, free lunches, and a beautiful office to go to. I splurged on a long cocoa-colored raincoat at Loehmann’s so I could look the part. Six months later I transitioned to a law firm – my dream job. I was one of the youngest lawyers in firm, but together with the paralegals we formed a youthful group – one that went regularly to happy hour beginning on Wednesdays, frequented Au Bon Pain in the lobby of our building for the lunchtime sandwich run, and took delight in ordering dinner from Takeout Taxi when we worked late, as we so often did. When the firm had clients in for lunches, we would wait till the clients left to make a mad dash for the leftover food – loading our plates with fancy sandwiches, kettle chips, pasta salad and cookies. Carbohydrates galore. For the firm’s monthly gathering to fete that month’s birthday celebrants, we would be the first ones into the conference room, hands outstretched with paper plates, welcoming the cupcakes, ice cream cake, or whatever the flavor of the month was.
My mind and memory were razor sharp at the time, which I used to counterbalance my youth. I look at my fellow externs now – they, too, have sharply analytical minds, evidenced as they probe and wonder aloud. Truth be told, I am a bit intimidated by them and their sophistication and sheer ambition. Probably due to joy of shifting hormones in perimenopause, I have a hard time remembering things now, and am often groggy during the day from waking early. Sometimes after my predictable 4a bathroom run I am unable to fall back asleep, which makes me feel like taking a snooze during our lunch hour. But there is no opportunity or space. The futon in our communal extern office is always occupied by someone eating, chatting or working on a laptop.
How do I say, just wait till you’re 50 (okay, 49 but who’s counting?) and keep the family calendar, you, too, will forget things unless you write them down? How do I say, enjoy this time, when all you have to worry about is yourself? How do I say, enjoy those donuts now because one day your metabolism will shift and you won’t be able to indulge as freely? How do I say, when you have kids, your life is no longer your own? I remember a female attorney at the firm saying that to several of us associates one day at a lawyers’ lunch – “after you have kids, your life is not your own.” She was a partner, a sophisticated and attractive traditional Southern woman, but she was a bit mean to us, with a condescending edge, because she could be – and, perhaps, I now think, because she envied our freedom, our youth.
I will not be mean or condescending to my fellow externs, despite my extra decades of life experience. No, I freely concede my envy. I will even let myself wallow in it a bit, rather than suffocating it under my foot along with other negative emotions, as my 25-year-old self would have done. Among my fellow mom friends, a frequent sentiment is, “I would never go back to my 20s,” followed by a long litany of why the 30s, 40s, 50s are better. The truth is, I like myself better now than then. Nonetheless, there are some things that are advantageous in the 20s. I wish I could still indulge in carbo-loading. I wish all of the hours in the day were devoted to just me. I wish there was no soccer carpool to drive. I wish I didn’t have to make dinner every night and go to the grocery store every other day.