What better place to celebrate an “over the hill” occasion than a winery in Napa Valley? A girlfriend has aged gracefully. While she is crushed that the female members of her clique are younger than she is, we remind her that the male counterparts are just about ready to harvest their social security and that she is a long time away from that even though her AARP membership is about to arrive in her mailbox.

This is the first beautiful weekend since the year began. Napa valley is baking. The barbecue smell of August skewers the spring afternoon.  The same question rings in our ears. Living in one of the most panoramic parts of the United States, why won’t we head out into the wide, open spaces more often? Why do we seek to go to Europe or Hawaii for a vacation but not even consider taking a day or two every few months to unwind and recharge right next to home?

Even yesterday, with a weekend away from AP and SAT tests, parents like me obsess and find a reason to not head out somewhere because there is so much “work” to do.

“But our children don’t have a life,” a friend in our clique says. "A 50^thbirthday of a close friend is a perfect excuse to make the time.”  So my son joins us, his homework and SAT prep books in tow, for a few hours of down time in a life that’s pressure-packed with unrealistic deadlines, guilt trips, supposedly life-altering future targets and a high school electronic grading system that fluctuates faster than the NASDAQ Composite Index.

It’s many years since our group has walked into a winery.  Every time I enter the cavernous fermentation room where the cool of the dark fuses with the headiness of oak and wine, I breathe deep the fragrance. Is this the aroma of fermenting wisdom, I wonder?  When, after you’re yanked and squeezed and blended by the process called life, you just steep, contemplating what you really are at the core. Does the enterprise of aging slowly dredge away your seed, your bitter core and your veneer so what is left to decant is your essence, an essence that you can now bottle up and market as your true self?

Outside, by the picnic area, the summer sun bores down on the vines curling around the stakes. Our small group of aging married couples laughs about our pet peeves, our advertised obsessions and life with our batty spouses. It's a place where the lust of twenty-five years ago has graduated to trust and is fast decelerating into rust. When you’ve known one another for almost three decades, longer than the wine bottles aging in the cellar of the winery, you can beat one another to pulp and never fear you’re uncorking someone’s dignity.

As I barrel towards the finish line of my forties, I begin to think that fifty may not really be a bad place to be. You're, after all, like a raisin in the sun. Less juicy than the grape you once were. Less shapely than the grape but much more practical. Shriveled–unfortunately, in all the wrong places–but meatier. And tougher, but always sweeter.