The Middle Ages

By Phin Upham

In the article, “Reinventing Middle Age,” Daphne Merkin writes about the many different struggles of the baby-boomer generation. They are not young anymore and they’re not old. They are in between. The article is overflowing with sayings and descriptions of this unique generation.

The reader soon realizes that Merkin is part of this generation, which is why she knows the group so well. She speaks with authority when she writes, “We are a strange bunch, we who belong to the New Middle Ages, half intractably cynical and half hopelessly expectant. Many of us, that is, believed we could put in for one order of rose garden, with a schmear on the side.”

She uses the article to write about her own journey of aging, which started when she noticed grey hairs in the eyebrows. She ends the article with an encouraging verse from a Bruce Springsteen song, offering hope to a generation that might need it the most.

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