Middle age is like dying from freezing to death. You find yourself stranded in another snowbank, white everywhere and at first you're shocked, scared - how did I get here? - and you use adrenaline to help you find your way back the way you came. But it's no use. You cannot find your way back, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many breadcrumbs you dropped behind you. And so you stoically tramp forward, not knowing what you'll find, but knowing it probably won't be good. And the coldness turns to a kind of warmth, and you're getting a little sleepy, in a good way. And you think, "maybe I'll just sit under that tree and rest a bit, before going any further. I'll just get my strength up before I power on." And you rest under the tree, and you feel warm and sleepy and yummy and you never wake up. Instead, you dream in endless loops of short-term memory loss, menopause, miniature 401(K)s.

Middle age cannot compete with childhood. The utter newness of everything. How everything is a first, your first Christmas, your first tooth falling out, the first time you throw up, your first pet. How lucky to have found this planet earth where Big Mac's and hershey bars exist. You make friends easily, the seasonal changes are magic. One snowflake on your tongue can make your day.

It cannot compete with youth. The hormones, the adrenaline, the lack of pain - hullo! my knees don't hurt! The future that lays ahead of you, a blank canvas and only you will decide the picture, slowly filling it in like an etch-a-sketch, schools, friends, boyfriends, holidays. The ability to make mistakes, and rebound from them. How lovely. How wonderful that it will always be this way. You're a satellite circling the endless goodness of you.

It cannot compete with your thirties, when you were still fertile and could decide to have kids or not have kids. There was still more time ahead of you than lay behind. New forks in the road, choosing that road less travelled. Reading new books, seeing new movies, meeting new people, trying new foods & drinks & locales. Ahh, dealing perhaps with that first glimpse of...an addiction?

And then one morning, you wake up, and there's been a snowstorm. A white-out actually. And you ponder your choices. There don't seem to be that many. There are bills to be paid so one must work at a job. There are children to be fed, so one must not go off on a month long drinking binge. There are family members to tolerate and others that you just won't anymore. There are acts of betrayal, shakespearean in nature, that must be mourned. There are marriages ("you poor suckers"), there are births ("you poor suckers") and there are deaths. And occasionally you actually find yourself envying the dead, those who have crossed already, with no note, no backward glance & no words of advice ("always look both ways when crossing train tracks!"). There are achy joints, cavities to be filled, root canals. There are aging parents. There is the loss of beauty and the knowledge that "Haggard" is the new look.

There is the constant knowing that dinner must be made, or bought & eaten and the cyclical nature of this event alone is enough to make you go mad.

So I am trudging, trudging in the snow drifts, directionless, trying to make meaning out of something that perhaps, when you get right down to it, there is no meaning to it. It is the softness of the snowfall and peace that comes with the blanketing that somehow tricks us into thinking: perhaps there is something up ahead, something I've been waiting for and didn't even know it. What is that up ahead? Grandchildren? Retirement? Heart Bypass? Ah, no, it's just an illusion, brought on by this unrelenting cold. I can't see anything but that damn tree.