Riki May Amano didn't imagine turning 50 looking like this:

She's retired from one career but working full-time in another. She's studying for finals. And she and her husband are living with her two daughters, their husbands and three grandkids, all in the same house near Punchbowl.

"Did I think I'd be doing this at 52? I guess I didn't give it much thought," said the retired judge and new president of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i. "Once I hit my 40s, I got the idea that all the things I had planned didn't matter. Life was going to take me on its own tailwind."

Turning 50 can be a wake-up call, a time of reassessment. It's a time to look at one's life and say, "Where am I? When did this happen? What did I miss? And is this it?"

This is an especially critical time for baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — who have more responsibilities and obligations than ever before. What happens when age, health, stress, careers, rising expenses, aging parents and empty nests collide?

"This is new territory," said Dr. Diane Thompson, co-director of the Quality of Life program at Straub Clinic & Hospital. Fiftysomethings "can't follow the maps and guidelines their parents did."

Today's 31 million fiftysomethings nationwide — 171,000 in Hawai'i — are vastly different from their counterparts a generation ago, who lived through events such as the Depression and World War II.

Fiftysomethings today are still working, sometimes more than one job, and contemplating retiring well past 65. Some are taking care of grandkids and aging parents, while others are raising young children. Still others are single and dating. Some are well off, others in debt.

These baby boomers have a reputation for challenging the roles and stereotypes of being 50 head-on. They're pushing physical limits, taking risks, reaching lifelong goals and setting new ones.

Amano feels like she's caught between two lives. She's retired in law but working full-time at a nonprofit. She commutes among Hilo, Honolulu and California, where she's attending Pepperdine University. She's been married for 35 years to her high school sweetheart, but she hardly sees him anymore.

Then again, she wouldn't have it any other way.

"Sometimes you have to do things because you have to believe it's the right direction for you," Amano said. "And you'll figure it out along the way. For me, I'm confident with the idea that the answers will all come with time."

Yet some challenges inevitably accompany age for fiftysomethings, including health problems and a new awareness of mortality, along with the pressure to have plans for retirement settled.

Thompson suggests that instead of focusing on the what ifs, fiftysomethings will be most satisfied if they reshape their attitudes and be proud of what they've already accomplished. After all, this is midlife. There's another half to go.

"There is that thought," Thompson said. " 'I'm 50. Is this where I thought I would be?' But it really should be, 'I'm 50. I have all these wonderful experiences. I've earned this age.' "

THE CAN-DO GENERATION

Change is inevitable with age and time. But some fiftysomethings like Chiyome Fukino take on a major turnaround in midlife.

Fukino, 54, was a happily single doctor in private practice on O'ahu. Now she's married and head of the state Department of Health.

Her new life wasn't one she had planned for.

"I thought, at 50, I'd have a successful career in medicine, that I'd own a house, but it's OK," said Fukino, who rents a condo in Makiki. "There are some good things about living in a condo. Like not doing yardwork."

Fukino admits to feeling unsettled when she turned 50, mostly because she still wasn't married.

"It was fairly traumatic," she said. "But you can't rail against time, because it's going to happen."

Like Amano, Fukino hadn't anticipated changing careers at 50. But she was willing to make the change to take on a job where she felt she could make a difference in the lives of others. And she felt confident she could handle the challenge because she still had a lot of life ahead.

Today's fiftysomethings, experts say, seem more confident than those a generation ago, probably because they feel healthier and more youthful than fiftysomethings of previous eras.

An AARP survey found that boomers, on average, think of themselves as seven years younger than their actual age.

At 57, Larry Mackey loves it when people think he's in his mid-40s. And that happens often.

His active lifestyle — running, cycling, swimming — keeps him feeling young, vital and confident. (He's only missed 20 days of working out in 11 years.)

"It's an ego booster to me," said Mackey, a building manager for a high-rise in Waikiki who works out with Diane, his wife of 34 years. "I'm content in every way — physically, financially, mentally. We have a very good life."

FACING MIDLIFE ISSUES

The challenge for fiftysomethings is acknowledging their age while remaining youthful and optimistic in mind and body. And it's not easy — not when knees start creaking and metabolisms begin to slow.

"It's an odd thing," said Nancy Sidun, chief clinical psychologist at Kaiser Permanente, who turned 50 this year. "The challenge of turning 50 is thinking I don't have the entire future ahead of me. Because at 30 you feel like you have tons of options of what you might do in life. I always thought there are other things I could do, but I'm now realizing that window is getting much smaller. And that's unsettling to me."

Sidun, who thinks of herself as still being in her late 30s, said she catches herself reading obituaries and noticing when people her age have died.

"I'll see someone who's 50 and think at least he lived a good chunk of his life," Sidun said. "Then I think, 'Oh my God, that could be me.' That's just unacceptable to me."

With age, Sidun's life has changed in ways she could never have predicted.

Like Fukino, the psychologist nearly wrote off marriage — but not motherhood. At 39 she adopted a baby girl from China, now 11 years old. Then she got married at 43 for the first time, to a divorced man with a daughter in her 20s.

As an older mother, she thinks about the age difference between her and her daughter, Alex.

"If I were 80 years old, she would be 41," Sidun said. "Wow. How can I be a youthful person, to be there for her, to share her milestones in life? ... I think about that for sure, but I also think that we have such a lovely quality of life together."

Today's fiftysomethings are realizing they have more options than ever before, from fertility drugs to alternative medicine to cosmetic surgery.

Along with that comes changing attitudes toward midlife. No longer is it the hilltop from which people slide down. Fiftysomethings today can become new parents, change careers, return to school or get married for the first time. There are no rules anymore.

"We go through at least three and as many as half a dozen major developments in our lives," said Sue Shellenbarger, 53, a Portland-based columnist for the Wall Street Journal and author of "The Breaking Point: How Female Midlife Crisis is Transforming Today's Women."

"As adults we are constantly growing and changing ... (Women) used to think once we got married and had kids, we would be settled, but that's not so. Some of us hit a new development stage at 50, again at 60 and again at 70. There's a constant need to renew ourselves."

Shellenbarger should know. At 49, her 20-year marriage ended, her father died and her children were on the brink of leaving the nest. She had reached a sort of crisis stage, a time, she explains in her book, when old values and goals no longer made sense.

"Midlife brings traits, needs or desires that have been ignored or repressed roaring back on center stage in one's personality," she wrote in her book. "We strive at midlife to integrate the pieces of ourselves that we have been missing — to become whole."

Reach Catherine E. Toth at ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.