Cindy La Ferle

Some of us boomers, even before we knew what generation we were part of, feared milestone birthdays. 20, the end of childhood; 30, the end of youth; 40, the beginning of middle age; 50, just a decade til 60! But writer Cindy La Ferle has shared with BoomerCafé a letter she just wrote to a friend turning 50. It’s all about the good things.

Dear D.:

Your 50th is coming up this month. Rather than send you a bunch of black balloons and one of those dumb cards with a joke about adult diapers, I’m writing you a letter with some advice. I offer it with a full heart and the seasoned experience of someone who’s all of three years older than you are.

There’s no denying that 50 is a landmark birthday. A turning point. The Big One. Over the next few weeks, you’ll be paying more attention to the mirror in your bathroom. Reading your face like a road map, you’ll scrutinize your eyelids and check the skin around your cheekbones. You might notice, for the first time, a couple of age spots that can’t quite pass as freckles. You’ll wonder if your jaw line isn’t as sharp as it used to be.

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As active baby boomers, we feel young … but how young do we have to look? Journalist Cindy La Ferle says, not nearly as young as parts of society demand! When she looks around, she sees Women of an Uncertain Age.

Lately, my fifty-something friends and I have been rehashing the time-worn topic of aging gracefully versus aging desperately.

Even in the scant-few women’s magazines geared to our demographic, “mature” fashion models appear to be surgically altered or botoxed, then dressed to look 35. The message? Aging is shameful. To be avoided at all costs. She who looks youngest wins.

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For many baby boomers, Halloween may conjure up images and memories of a more innocent time. Clearly it does for writer Cindy La Ferle who shares this essay about Halloween from her book, Writing Home.

“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” ~George Carlin

Halloween always stirs a cauldron of memories for nostalgic baby boomers. Who could forget trick-or-treating with packs of neighborhood pals until our pillowcases were too heavy to haul around the block? In the early 1960s, All Hallow’s Eve was spun of pure magic. Ordinary suburban streets morphed into riotous carnivals ruled by tiny goblins, sheet-clad ghosts, bearded hobos, and Superman wannabes.

Thanks to those of us who’ve shared favorite Halloween traditions with our own kids, the “season of the witch” now competes with Christmastime as the biggest party season of the year. And while Halloween superstores are marketing polyester pirate costumes and ready-made graveyard decor, I suspect that what most of us still enjoy about this evocative fall holiday is the creativity factor.
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Baby boomers may have less time left on earth than, say, Generation X-ers, but we’ve got more time on our hands to do what we want to do, and to learn from it. So it is for writer Cindy LaFerle, who has given BoomerCafé an excerpt from her collection “Writing Home” (HearthStone Books). It’s about Late Blooming in the Garden of Midlife.

After all these years, I still can’t muster the nerve to call myself a real gardener.

Real gardeners understand that a garden is an ecosystem as well as an art form. Real gardeners spend hours studying seed catalogs, and can identify every plant in the nursery by its botanical name. Always victorious in the battle against slugs, real gardeners are attuned to nature’s early warning signs and know exactly what to do when leaves turn yellow.

A real gardener I am not — but I’m getting there.

Of course, gardening as a metaphor for living is a cliché as old as the gardens at Versailles. But after turning fifty, it hit me that plotting my life’s course has been as tricky as maintaining the perennial beds I started a few years ago. My garden has provided several clues along the way.

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For most of us, part of being a baby boomer is seeing our own babies grow up. It feels pretty good….but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Writer Cindy LaFerle, whose new column collection “Writing Home” has just been published, found that she had to go out on a wing and a prayer to learn to let go.

The paradox of parenting is this: The better I’ve done my job, the higher my child will fly — farther away from me. – Author unknown

A jet bound for London’s Heathrow Airport left the country in February carrying 120 rowdy college students — including my only child. Two hours before takeoff, he’d looked nervous and excited, and I couldn’t help but recall the first time I dropped my little boy off at kindergarten 14 years ago.

As his dad and I pulled away from the airport, I lost my well-rehearsed composure and dissolved into a ridiculous puddle of tears, right there in the car. Focused on the road ahead, my husband looked a little teary, too. But he quickly reminded me that our son was on his way to the educational opportunity of a lifetime — not to a war zone. Studying in London for four months is hardly as dramatic as being shipped off to Iraq with the military.

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