July 12, 1999, Grand Forks, N.D.

"I want to live the real life, I want to live my life close to the bone. Just because I'm middle-aged that don't mean I want to sit around the house and watch T.V. I want the real life. I want to live the real life."

--"The Real Life," by John Mellencamp, from "The Lonesome Jubilee" album

Dear classmates and friends,

Some months back I sent birthday greetings to a friend who replied, "At my age I'd just as soon forget about birthdays." Not me. I think every morning I can get out of bed to face another day is a good day. Unlike the lady in Eureka who my sister and I said "good morning" to a few weeks back. "What's so good about it," she fairly snarled back at us. "Sheesh," my sister whispered to me. "She's alive and the sun is shining. Isn't that enough to make a good morning?"

This week I'll be 44 years old. I was never very good at arithmetic but even I can figure that my life is more than half over. I'm old enough to know how many of my hopes and dreams I've buried along the way. I'm old enough to have regrets and to torture myself over past mistakes, especially the ones that hurt other people. I've had to go places I would rather not have gone, and I've had to make the best of things more often than I care to remember.

Hardest of all, I've had to say good-bye to some very dear people. My father has been gone more than two years and hardly a day goes by that I don't spend a moment in tears for missing him.

And yet this seems such a hopeful time of life to me. I read recently that many people in their mid-40s experience a feeling of renewal and even rebirth. Unfortunately I can't tell you where I read this or who wrote it, because the flip side of being 44 is that I didn't write this down as soon as I read it, so now I can't remember.

Still that idea of renewal has stuck with me, and I feel it is true in my life. A few years ago I thought my writing and reporting days were over. Surprise. They're not. I'm back at the Grand Forks Herald three days a week. I'm editing this website. In many ways, I'm writing more than ever and I'm writing about the things that are really important to me. What the future will bring, I'm not sure, but I think it's going to be very interesting.

I've found in my middle age that it doesn't take all that much to amuse me. "Things" are becoming less important to me all the time. Let's face it. After a certain point, we don't own our things anymore - they own us. We spend all our time taking care of them and worrying about them. I don't care anymore about having the newest car, the fanciest house, or the nicest furniture. I've learned that I can be happy most anywhere, as long as I have a certain amount of peace and quiet, and can have my books and music and a garden.

I no longer fuss about what I wear. I know what I like and what is comfortable and I don't buy anything else. For instance, I have worn the same style of shoes for almost 10 years now. Whenever they wear out, I just go back to the store and say, "Give me another pair just like these." My wardrobe consists of jeans, slacks, a few skirts, vests and T-shirts in denim, khaki, navy and white. I buy many of my clothes in the men's department at Target. It's amazing how much simpler this makes getting dressed in the morning.

I have learned that I am responsible for my own happiness. While there's no excuse for being mean to the people around me, I can't be responsible for their happiness either. Nor can I control what other people say and do, I can only decide how I am going to react to it. Control is mostly an illusion in this life anyway.

I feel closer to God than I ever have. I feel him with me every day. I used to think God was someone from whom I had to hide my mistakes. Now I know that God is there to help, guide and love me no matter how badly I manage to screw things up. How hard it has been for me to learn that sometimes you just have to "let go and let God." Of all the gifts he's given me, the one I'm most grateful for is a sense of humor. It has gotten me through many dark days.

Today more than ever before I can appreciate an early-morning walk along the English Coulee, the hollyhocks, daisies and lilies in my perennial bed, and my family, especially our Emily, now 15. Of all the joys of this time in my life, there is none more wonderful than watching this beloved child grow and flourish, to hear her secrets and share her heartaches, to laugh at her and her friends and their playfulness and all their adventures.

This has been a busy summer and a lot of it has been spent in the car traveling from this event to that. I may be middle-aged, but I still love to drive across the Dakotas as fast as the law will allow with my radio and/or tape deck cranked up to Warp 10, playing rock music loud enough so that it blows my hair back and makes the windows rattle. Those moments flying down the highway, listening to the Stones, or Springsteen, or Sheryl Crow, are the closest I'll ever get to feeling 17 again. Not that I'm longing for a return to my younger days. Today is the real life, and I'm glad for every day of it.

Your friend, Paulette.

(Paulette Haupt Tobin grew up on a farm northeast of Eureka and graduated from EHS in 1973. Today she lives in Grand Forks, N.D.)