Courtesy of Amara Rose

By Amara Rose

I got my period on Valentine's Day. Talk about a literal red-letter day! Never have I been so unabashedly joy-filled at the sight of blood. For the first time, I truly appreciated a euphemism both girls and women have used for generations to refer to their Moontime: "my friend."

Perhaps I should explain that I am not 13. I'm not 37. I'm 50, and this was my first cycle in five months. Menopause swooped in without warning last fall, and I dried up like the Sahara. To suddenly bleed after a week in which I did, in fact, feel premenstrual is confirmation that my body's still experimenting with this shift. It's not a done deal. There's yet time to adjust to the idea of being a crone—and being eligible for membership in the AARP (you've got to be kidding!).

Now that the baby boomers, the largest cohort in history, is graying, someone turns 50 approximately every eight seconds. Even this formidable fleet can't stem the tide of aging jokes, however. At 50, the good-natured ribbing begins in earnest. My friend Faith, who celebrated her 50th just weeks before me, recalled a card she received when she turned 40: "I'm going to have to say the  F word: forty, forty, forty! We lamented that the greeting card industry doesn't seem to think we still have a sense of humor a decade later. Why isn't there a card for 50-year-olds that reads, "I'm at the age where I can freely use the F word: fifty, fifty, fifty!!"

My parents, who do not perceive themselves as "old" in their eighties, sent me a hilarious Dr. Seuss parody of "Thing One" and "Thing Two" called "It's a Fifty Thing!" The card included lines such as "Thing Fifty can groove to the latest CD. (And with bifocal lenses, Thing Fifty can see!)"

Hmm. It's one "thing" to major in gerontology and enjoy working with elders in your twenties; it’s quite a different matter when you're on the cusp of joining a collective that's marginalized in Western society and rendered virtually invisible.

I remember my mom telling me with pride about a man at the Department of Motor Vehicles flirting with her when she retook her driver's test at age 65. I was 35 at the time, and even then, wondered aloud in my public speaking class "how much longer" men would continue to flirt with me.

From the vantage point of an additional 15 years, I find my 30-something fear rather quaint.