On Turning 50: The Gift of Self-Knowledge

Some years ago I gave my father a hand-crafted leather wallet as a gift. He examined it approvingly and then looked up with sudden delight. "This," he said, triumphantly, "will be my last wallet!" 

I wondered then and long thereafter why he was so happy about that. His "last wallet?" The one that somebody would remove from his right rear pocket when he could no longer do it himself? I found it an unbearably gloomy thought. Not him, though. You should have seen his face; he couldn't have been more pleased.

Having recently turned 50, I'm starting to understand where dear old Dad was coming from. His pleasure didn't come from just one place, it turns out. It came from two or three places that, taken together, speak of a quiet kind of self-knowledge -- one I think I'm starting to recognize in myself.

First and foremost, Dad saw in that wallet an end to a particular hassle. Hell, to him, is a shopping mall. So, it came as quite a relief to him that he wouldn't have to sort through a department-store selection of wallets, looking for that rare one that has a coin section. (He says loose coins ruin his pockets.) On that gifting day I gave him more than a wallet; I gave him reprieve. Having seen my favorite bra styles discontinued again and again, I've come to understand the kind of frustration he was happy to avoid. After a certain point you realize that, catch-phrases aside, there's not much thrill in the hunt.

Given my Dad's aversion to shopping, it seems fair to conclude that hassle prevention was likely the biggest part of his pleasure in that wallet. But some of his delight was related to aging, too. His math told him that a leather accessory this durable would probably not need replacement in his lifetime. To him, this was a source of gladness.

I'm beginning to understand this reaction, too. I am quite a bit younger than Dad was when he received that wallet, but like him, I am finding great satisfaction in doing things I will probably never have to do again -- like putting a new roof on the house, and getting the kitchen cabinets re-painted now that the kids have grown beyond the dent-and-nick stage. After years of assuming that, sigh, "someday" I'd "have to" do these things, I don't. They're done!

It was also an unexpected pleasure when I concluded this year that I would never need to buy a bottle of perfume again. I don't wear a scent often, mostly because so many people nowadays have become sensitive to fragrance, yet here I sit with two unopened packages of my favorite perfume, Scherrer, tucked away in the bathroom vanity. Just as my Dad's math told him he'd never need another wallet, my calculations indicate that based on past usage it's entirely possible my supply will outlast me -- or at least my desire to broadcast pheromones. I had to laugh when the thought occurred to me, and the news pleased my husband, too. No longer would he have to keep an eye out as he travels for this rare, French, no-longer-sold-in-the-U.S. fragrance. He could cross this particular mission off his to-do list. For both of us, it was a glass-clinking moment of minor celebration.

Surely another thing that tickled my Dad about that black leather wallet was its sheer quality of workmanship. It was hand-sewn and hand-tooled, made by a man in a small workshop. No mass-produced wallet could compete with it. At first blush, Dad may well have thought it was too fine a piece of work for him, for he has always been an overly practical man. But, in the next moment, I think he felt very much deserving of it. He turned it over and over in his hands, inhaling the rich aroma of the leather, declaring that he would derive pleasure from that wallet every time he used it. (He did, too. Many times when I was around to see him pay for something, he would turn to me and waggle that wallet in the air proudly.)

I'm certain I didn't appreciate the inherent soulfulness of certain objects when I was in my twenties and thirties -- does anybody? In those decades, newness and style mean everything, maybe because we're all in the process of becoming and discovering. But at 50 I know well the feeling of reverence for something fine, something purposeful, that special something that lasts. My blue hand-thrown ceramic bowls speak of possibility when empty and abundance when full. A plastic bowl simply will no longer suffice. Neither will my ratty old cheapo garden gloves. The goatskin leather garden gloves I bought myself the other day were $10, even after markdown. That's a lot for a natural-born cheapskate like me to pay. But I wanted them, I think I deserve them, and the work of hauling yard debris will seem almost dignified when I wear them. I think I understand now that, in the wallet I gave him, Dad was letting a little bit of luxury into his life. If not now, he thought, when? 

The singular benefit of aging, perhaps, is an increased sense of self-recognition. You get to a point in your fifties or later, I think, where you just plain know yourself. You are clear -- or at least a lot clearer -- about what you like, what you want, what you must have. So, I suppose that's the third and last aspect of my Dad's reaction to that wallet. He had lived long enough to know what he wanted (in a wallet, in this case), he recognized it when he saw it (which is where the real wisdom of life experience lies), and he allowed himself to glory in possessing it.

I feel that way about my house now: I don't need a decorator to tell me how it should look; my husband and I know immediately whether a color or style is "us" or not. It's also how I feel about my perfume. Even if I weren't awash in supply, you wouldn't find me spraying department-store testers on my wrist. At this stage of my life I neither want nor need to seek out some other "perfect" fragrance; mine is Scherrer.

I suppose someone could read all I've written and say, ah, the poor dear, she's celebrating endings, she's giving up on variety, she has chosen predictability over serendipity and surprise. I sincerely hope that's not true. I still want all of that from life, and I hope I always will. But, from where I sit here at 50, there is peace to be found -- even joy -- in crossing onerous tasks off lists and editing life down to what best serves us and gives us most pleasure.

By the way, my father no longer uses that beautiful wallet. Oh, he's still got it; it sits on his dresser, shined by use and curved to the shape of his body. But he carries one of those department store wallets again. It turns out the snap on the coin section was too big, not flat enough. If he sat back on his posterior, it poked him right in the sciatic nerve and, after awhile, it became too annoying to put up with. As I've said, Dad's always been a most practical man, and practicality is one of those features that, like a nose, grows more prominent with age. Why do anything if it's not working anymore? Why suffer with something that no longer pleases? This, too, I am beginning to understand.

Ellen Wojahn is a journalist and author based in the Pacific Northwest.