I turned 50 last November. No big deal. Really—not an issue. I don’t mind the hair growing out of my nose and ears, my aging knees (just got ’scoped), my receding hairline or that my 11-year-old daughter Grace constantly chirps, “You are really, really old.” No, I simply consider it a phase I am going through. Something I can recover from. The real test of my durability happens next week when Jan leaves the country for a week for her 50th birthday celebration and I am left alone with our three children. I hope I remember to pack lunches that “I wouldn’t mind eating” and organize every soccer bag without leaving a shin guard behind—just two of the 604 line items in the 112-page document that Jan is leaving behind for me. Wish me luck! Seems that most of our classmates are weathering the 50-year-old storm better than I.


Karen Francis writes: “On July 11, 2010, I married a wonderful guy named Rick DeGolia. We both have business interests in the wine industry and were married at Mayacama Golf Club in Santa Rosa, California, in front of 200 of our dearest friends. Tamara Loomis, my best friend since being roommates at Dartmouth, was my matron of honor and her daughter Sophie was my flower girl. After an adventurous honeymoon on the Canadian coast with 35 pounds of salmon we caught accompanying us home, we settled in Atherton, California. I am CEO of AcademixDirect, a marketing technology company in Silicon Valley and involved as well in many nonprofit interests and boards.”


This from Susan Schoenberger, “I amgoing on a trip to Paris with my sisters in May. Great way to take the sting out of 50. I moved from print journalism to online journalism in 2010, and I’m now working for Patch.com. I’ve been married for 23 years and I have a son in college (Muhlenberg) and two daughters in high school. All three kids are very artistic, so my husband jokes that he’ll never be able to stop working. After a decade of working on my fiction when no one was looking, I had my first novel published in 2011. It’s called A Watershed Year. I’ve been having the time of my life promoting it, and while it’s gone from the shelves at most bookstores by now, it’s available through any online bookseller and on any e-book device. I’ve become adept at skyping with book clubs, so if anyone’s interested in that, let me know. I keep in touch with my fellow ’84 novelist Deb Schupack and with Mara Rudman and a few other ’84s via Facebook, but I’d love to catch up with more of them.”


For those of you who also want to stay in touch, Roy Forbes is spearheading two “big 50” events in Southern California. The first will be March 29 at the Little Bar in Los Angeles. The second will be June 24 at the Will Rogers State Beach. For more information, please contact Roy at (310) 770-1303 or royforbes@aol.com.


Also, in Northern California Jack Oswald has graciously offered to open the doors of his beautiful new home to host a “50th birthday bash” on June 24. The location in the heart of the Sonoma wine country in Healdsburg, California, offers plenty of opportunities for making a long weekend out of it. Please contact Jack at (415) 986-8300.


And, of course, if you want to share your 50th birthday tales of joy (or woe), you can reach out to Jan and me via telephone, e-mail or Facebook.


—Derek Chow and Jan Gordon, 132 Wildcat Lane, Boulder, CO 80304; (303) 448-1580; janandderek@comcast.net