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In the middle of a Jimmy Buffett concert, I realized I am not aging gracefully. As I waved my arms in the air screaming, "Fins to the left, fins to the right," a spotlight swept the audience. I saw a sea of manic middle-aged people in Hawaiian shirts, just like me.

When my mom was my age, she never would have gone to a concert in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. She wouldn't have dressed that way at any age. She was of the Glenn Miller era, when women wore tailored dresses with hats and gloves, stockings and high-heeled pumps. She eventually embraced pantsuits, but she never owned a pair of jeans.

My parents' generation was elegant in its dress. To this day, my dad never leaves the house without a hat -- not a baseball cap, a proper hat. Their music, though, like mine, was sometimes irreverent and often silly. Mom sang "Mairzy Doats," "Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive" and "Too Fat Polka" to my sisters and me. Those songs set the tone for my future music appreciation.

I am of an age to be a folk music fan, but I never was. I recall going to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert with friends and thinking, "This is boring." My secret, uncool indulgence was to blast country music on the car radio. I used to love lyrics like, "Don't Come Home a-Drinkin' with Lovin' on Your Mind." I still do, though in deference to adultiness, I switch between WBRF ("Blue Ridge Country") and WVTF ("Classical. Jazz. NPR.")

I once drove overnight from Pearisburg to Orlando, Fla., 12 hours straight through, listening to nothing but Buffett's "Son of a Son of a Sailor" and "The Eagles' Greatest Hits, Volumes 1 and 2." That music is perfect for singing along as you cruise through Georgia at 3 a.m. washing down Planters peanuts with Diet Coke.

I was shocked the first time I saw an Eagles song on an oldies playlist. That simply couldn't be. The Eagles are ageless, like The King (dead), The Godfather of Soul (dead) and The Stones (look dead). I saw Don Henley in concert a couple of years ago and thought he looked terrific. So did the rest of the middle-aged women who made up most of the audience.

My niece was shocked to learn recently that her daughter (my grandniece -- how did that happen?) never heard of The Boss. How do you explain Springsteen to a Jonas Brothers fan? You don't. You might start out, "When I was your age," then you realize how lame that sounds and just shrug.

I heard Def Leppard on oldies radio recently and laughed out loud. If the mosh pit generation is old, then what am I? That's right. Ancient.

Def Leppard is touring this summer with Poison and Whitesnake, bands familiar to me from my daughters' heavy metal days. Lead vocalist Joe Elliott is about to turn 50, and one-armed drummer Rick Allen is 45.

In my girls' early teen years, Friday night meant having their friends sleep over to watch "Headbangers Ball" on MTV. They knew all the bands and musicians, speculated about who had liposuction and whether Jon Bon Jovi had to endure perm rods to get his hair that way.

My children are in their 30s now, and Def Leppard is approaching AARP age. Yet the band is living its '80s credo, "Better to burn out than fade away." Good for them.

The Uppity Blues Women played in Christiansburg last month on their final tour. They are not fading away. Their documentary film, "Hot Flash," comes out on DVD this summer. They are retiring, however.

Singer and guitarist Gaye Adegbalola told the audience here that she just got her Medicare card -- time to do something more sedate than travel with a blues group.

I can't picture those women settling into a quiet retirement. After all, this is a band that celebrates infirmity and the indignities of aging. Cancer survivor? Sing along to "Bald Headed Blues." Packed on a few pounds over the years? You've got "Too Much Butt for One Pair of Jeans."

Maybe that is aging gracefully -- reveling in who you are, greeting each new eye wrinkle as a line on the map of a life lived with brio. Or maybe aging gracefully is totally overrated.

Giles County native Deanne Estrada is communications coordinator for a global agricultural program managed at Virginia Tech. You can e-mail her at
deanne.estrada@gmail.com.