Ma'm I Am

Thank you, ma'm. May I help you, ma'm? General or senior, ma'm? Have a nice day, ma'm.

I hear it here. I hear it there.
I hear this ma'm said everywhere.

In France around la Tour Eiffel
I'm not addressed as mademoiselle.

In Rome they greet "signora, ciao"
Along the Rhine I am a frau.

Is it the strands of gray or one more crease
That cause the title "Miss" to cease?

Perhaps I exude an air of maturity
Though I'm years away from Social Security.

If ma'm is a sign of etiquette
For that I'm just not ready yet.

Yes, I resist but still find it funny --
I'd rather be called ma'm than honey.

Yikes! How Did I Get to be 60?

I love birthdays. I believe they should be stretched to birthweeks -- even birthmonths. Just one celebration after another all about YOU. I have remained fairly upbeat marking the rapid passage of time --- that is until last year.

2006 was the year when both numbers changed (again) on that odometer of life. June 18, 2006 I turned 60! Sixty! How did that happen? I belong to that first wave of millions of 1946-born baby boomers who now teeter on 'senior' status. Knowing that others feel my pain offers little consolation. I'm 60!

Thirty barely created a tic on the age-o-meter. At forty I threw one of the best bashes ever. For my 50th I was living and working abroad having an adventure.

I had to be cajoled and coaxed into 60. I crossed days off the calendar with all the enthusiam of a convict marking chits on his cell wall. I was haunted by visions of Aunt Clara who was 60 when I was a child. Her face had more wrinkles than a damp t-shirt forgotten in the clothes dryer. The chance that some genes skip a generation was all that kept me from buying -- and applying -- massive quantities of industrial strength anti-aging creams. I did, however, add the number of a botox specialist to my speed dial. That way, in case I panicked, I wouldn't waste time looking one up in the Yellow Pages.

I usually use birthdays as a time to evaluate what I've done the past year and set goals -- albeit non-binding ones -- for the coming months. Like those famous movie critics, sometimes I give the year a thumbs up, sometimes a thumbs down. Whether this annual process is therapeutic or masochistic has yet to be decided.

So if I do this every year, you can only imagine what happens for those birthdays ending in a zero. That's when the year just passed is mushed in with the entire decade. So I wasn't just turning 60 -- I was torturing myself with my "decade in review" process. There was a moment (perhaps I was reviewing year number 54 or maybe 56) when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball under my coffee table and commune with the dust bunnies.

But this year was different. Two days ago I turned 61. Note the absence of an exclamation point. Two days ago I skipped the good year/bad year process. Didn't even think about it. Perhaps it was because I was sitting on the tarmac at O'Hare in an overheated plane for three hours waiting to take off and my growing impatience overrode everything else.

Or maybe I'm just fine with being 61.