Middle Age

OK, so I'm 46, as are many of my colleagues, give or take a few years, and the looming 50th birthday is a subject of consuming interest to us. We, the leading edge of the postwar Baby Boom--stuck with the label like an 80-year-old still called Sis or Babe--are now entrenched in middle age. As if on cue, we are being buried--excuse the allusion--in books about the transition from 40 to 50 to 60 and beyond.

Dr. Scholl's, which virtually created the market for foot care products, is taking aim at the Baby Boom generation trudging its way into the aches and pains of middle age. But just as with everything else, the barefoot generation of the '60s is walking a new path toward easing its tired tootsies. A new line of insoles and cushions made with a trademark synthetic material known as Poron, said to be extremely thin and shock-absorbent, is being introduced by Madison, N.J.

Americans seem more than a little interested -- by turns amused, abrasive and put on the defensive -- by a recent study linking church attendance to obesity in middle age. But the predictable reactions occasionally give way to thoughtfulness. First came the headlines as the media scrambled to spread the word about the study presented at an American Heart Assn. session this week: "Praise the lard? Religion fosters obesity by middle age. " "Religion and obesity: Can church make you fat?"

Predictions about the family: --Nine out of 10 baby boomers will marry once. --One in three will marry twice. --A baby-boom marriage will last 23 years, on average. --Half of baby boomers will divorce once. --One in five will divorce twice. --Only six in 100 baby boomers will achieve the "ideal" family--a lifetime marriage with two children, a boy and a girl. --By 1995, most baby-boom women will no longer be of child-bearing age. --Most of the baby-boom's children will see their parents divorce.

Elizabeth Kaye was 35 years old when she learned a shocking truth: She didn't have long to live. The realization didn't come in the typical fashion. No stony-faced doctor informed her that she had terminal cancer. There wasn't a thing wrong with her, in fact. All at once it just dawned on Kaye that life is short and death is certain. The source of her epiphany was hitting the probable halfway point of her existence, that chronological apex known as middle age.

Director Michael Apted is known for such diverse films as "Gorillas in the Mist," "Coal Miner's Daughter" and the James Bond romp "The World Is Not Enough," but it's the "Up" series of documentaries following a small group of Britons every seven years, starting at age 7, that carries his most distinctive signature. His latest entry, "56 Up," exploring their lives well into middle age, is now at the Nuart Theatre. And at the DGA Awards on Feb. 2, Apted (British-born and now a citizen of both Britain and the U.S.)

Middle-age men who feel hopeless or think of themselves as failures may develop atherosclerosis, the narrowing of the arteries that leads to heart attacks and strokes, faster than their more optimistic counterparts, researchers report. People who expressed high levels of despair had a 20% greater increase in atherosclerosis over four years, according to a report in the August issue of the American Heart Assn. journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.

First sign of spring: Strawberries big as baseballs. Second sign of spring: Fall soccer sign-ups. Seriously, is there any food more perfect than a deviled egg? Car I'd most love to wake up next to: the Audi A6. Woman I'd most love to drive around? I'm thinking, I'm thinking.... Middle age is that point in life when you finally understand the infield-fly rule. L.A.'s signature sandwich: the burrito. L.A.'s signature dish: Halle Berry. Squeaky new fan belt? Try a little surf wax.

The myths surrounding middle age are legion. From midlife crises to the "change of life," the middle years are often viewed as a time of upset and endings. Beginning with 30th-birthday celebrations, the decades of midlife are marked as milestones along the bridge to old age and the gradual loss of vigor and diminishing opportunities. But results from a new, large research project by the John D. and Catherine T.