Here I am.going on a wonderful 4-week vacation to Buenos Aires and my primary emotion - dominant emotion- is fear.

Wow, it's been 16 years since I last stepped on a plane and the motivation then was my desire to take my 80-year-old father for his first visit back to China, and to adopt a child. Strong desires plus drugs made it all possible.  I just hate being enclosed and restricted with absolutely no freedom.  So why fly now after 16 years?

Be truthful.  The big 50 has affected you.  Could it be that the fear is really of dying?  I can't believe that my friend Bill thought I started to dress differently at the moment I "aged."  More conservative? Me?! Since when can that adjective be applied to moi?

And I should be ashamed that I set up opportunities for people to ask my age.  "I'm old enough to be your mother," always receives the reply, "No, you can't be."  Then I can reveal that I'm 50 and they can look shocked and give me the sweet I crave.  "Why, you look so young.  I thought you were 35."  How shallow, Jackie.  You know it's not really satisfying because inside you feel 80 and your body hurts all the time.  Why bother?  Just accept it.  Yeah, right.  Easy to say and write, but tell the sagging breasts that.

This fear has such a strong presence in my life.  And it's funny, it's not consistent.  Sometimes I couldn't care less about how people perceive or judge me.  Mostly those are the times that concern my core beliefs.  Things that feel right for my soul.  My struggle is to take that same attitude and apply it to other aspects of myself.  So for me, life is about challenging fear and not living "in" my fear.  I want to be able to spread my wings.

Which is why I'm going to Buenos Aires - the homeland of Argentine Tango - a sexy, sensual dance where physical beauty, youth, and grace are significant commodities.  Commodities I feel that I`m losing as I grow older.  It's not like at home where women feel free to ask men to dance and women lead women.  Here, there's a code that basically begins when a man attempts to establish eye contact with you.  If I want to dance with him, I allow our eyes to meet.  We both nod and he walks over to escort me to the floor.  Eye contact!  I have never mastered that skill and. what if no one wants to have eye contact with me?  Everyone in the tango community has heard stories of women and men sitting all night without dancing.  Ultimate rejection.  Am I setting myself up?  Can I figure out how to be myself and fit within this code? Personally, I don't want my validation to depend on the number of times and by whom I am asked to dance.  After all I'm a feminist and I have worked hard to make this dance work for me.