Here in San Diego our coldest, rainiest winter in years is finally giving way to spring.  The signs are subtle; a few degrees warmer each afternoon, the grass growing just a little faster, and when we take our morning walk we sneeze from all the pollens in the air. The view from our front porch is not completely springlike, though; our 90 year old neighbor recently sold her home of 56 years, and the geraniums she lovingly cultivated for decades were killed when the house was tented for termites by its new owners.  My husband and I sit there having our breakfast and find ourselves staring, transfixed, at the shriveled vines climbing up her front porch.

Vicki, our ex-neighbor, is a pretty good friend of mine.  I've always gotten along easily and well with older people-- perhaps ironically, since I was born the youngest of four children and spent vast swatches of my youth proving I could handle my life in a mature, responsible, even intelligent fashion.  Until the day my mother died--when I was thirty five years old!--she introduced me as "her baby."  I was always playing catch up with my older sister, my older brothers, my older cousins, and gravitated naturally to older friends, feeling ill at ease among my peers.

So you can imagine how strange it feels to be a 39 year old co-ed, sitting in vast lecture theaters surrounded by advertising majors literally half my age.  While I wasn't paying attention I somehow morphed from being my mother's baby to that most hapless of creatures: the middle aged returning student my classmates and I used to scorn, the first time I was in college.  So I know just how my current classmates see me: I ask too many questions, I'm not sexually interesting--I am Old and In the Way.  Fortunately, I'm almost old enough to find that amusing.

College was quite a bit more fun when I was the right age to be there.  I slouched my way indifferently through general education requirements at the local junior college, persuaded impressionable young men to dissect my frog for me in Biology, dated a mean-spirited Taurus from my German class, snuck the latest issue of Rolling Stone into my sociology text.  I was young, I was cute, and I didn't have the slightest idea what I wanted from life except to become a rock star and eventually marry somebody wonderful.

Of course, when I gave age any thought at all, I only wished to be older.  I figured by the time I was forty I'd be all mature and intelligent and with-it, just all around fabulous.  And really, since my thirties have been sort of up and down (I did marry someone wonderful, but the rock star thing never panned out), I was sort of pinning my hopes on the idea that forty could only be better... until my recent visit to the optometrist.

I'd grown tired of squinting and coming home from lectures with horrible headaches, so I staggered off to the optometrist for a prescription.  I'm thinking, Cool, I always looked good in glasses, I can get some cute, stylish little Dr. Melfi specs and I'll look great, plus I'll actually be able to see and the headaches will disappear.  With little thought I sashayed into the office, plunked myself into the examining chair, and started saying "That one...no, that one" at the right moments.  Finally the exam reached its conclusion, and the doctor turned to me and uttered the horrible word.

Bifocals.

Okay, progressive lenses...but who are we kidding?  Bifocals!  I am officially middle aged, and it's amazing how surreal it feels.  After a lifetime of feeling old beyond my years while striving to prove my maturity to a family who assumed I would never really grow up, guess what: I have grown up.  I knew I was past the springtime of my life, but sort of figured I was at least hanging out in the neighborhood of mid to late summertime; come to find out I'm looking down the barrel of autumn.

But my chart tells a different story.  As we speak my progressed Sun is moving into a conjunction with Mars, ruler of Aries, the first sign of spring.  And in a year and a half my progressed moon will cross into the natal first house, also ruled by Mars and Aries.  These are unmistakable symbols of energy, new beginnings, vitality and spunk, and should by rights be putting me right in step with incipient spring. But my reality hasn't quite caught up with the symbols yet; I wake up pretty tired most days, and feel older as the day progresses, especially after a couple of classes.

So many women I know describe forty as a wonderful age, an age when life really begins. Just as my mind doesn't quite believe the symbolism of impending rebirth and vitality in my chart, my body doesn't quite believe the "life begins at forty" promise either...but the wisdom of my evolving chart doesn't need to believe: it just knows, and I've learned to trust what it tells me.

In the next week or so our new neighbors, a young couple, will move in across the street to begin their great adventure, there in the house where my friend Vicki and her husband raised her daughters a half a century ago.  Our new neighbors will clear away the dead geraniums, maybe plant something new, probably paint the dear old house in energetic but slightly gaudy colors and fill it with life and pets and children.  Meanwhile, from my place on the space-time continuum somewhere between our young neighbors and our old one, I'll watch from across the street and across the years, both remembering and looking ahead.

Through my new glasses, the view will be clearer than ever.