I raised my hand once too often at a charity auction and was the winning bidder on a week in Naples, Fla., at the gorgeous home of a generous donor, located inside a gated community and right on a golf course.

I was in shock when the hammer came down, but my husband was surprisingly calm and pleasant. "Happy anniversary," he said.

We roped our friends Connie and Bill into joining us. Connie and I have been part of a best-friend trio since seventh grade, and my husband and Bill genuinely like each other -- rare in the land of coupledom.

We arrived at the peak of Florida's snowbird season, as evidenced by all the upper Midwest license plates on the cars and all the silver hair on the golf courses and in the restaurants.

The four of us are closer to the age of those retirees than we are to the ages of the spring-break kids across the state in Fort Lauderdale, but we still felt strangely out of place. We felt young, too young for Florida.

I guess what they say is true: Baby boomers are so vain and so self-absorbed that they don't believe they are aging even when the evidence is powerful -- and painful. Each of us had a physical complaint, except for me. I had, like, six.

Aside from the feeling of superiority, of which we should be ashamed, there was on this trip a feeling of gratitude and a sense of the clock ticking.

I looked around us and watched my elders struggle with steps, with the hot sun's glare, with hands that shook the eggs off the fork. I watched golfers whose shoulders could no longer make the great arc of a swing and whose gait back to the cart was rickety. I saw women in too-sensible shoes, with shoulders bent and skin tanned as leather but slack and drooping.

"We are all one broken knee cap away from a hugely restricted life," I said, and I noticed that my hip was hurting again.

The four of us took a two-hour, open-air boat ride through the high heat and humidity of the Everglades and a 20-mile bike ride through a nature preserve. We passed older couples who took the same tours in covered boats or on trams, and we felt invigorated and shamefully self-satisfied.

Connie and the men played so much golf they looked burnished when they came in off the courses, but they were humbled by the play of a 70-year-old ex-golf pro who joined them to make a foursome. Comeuppance is waiting for you everywhere.

The last time we four were together, we were talking exit strategies. Everyone, except my husband, who plans to die at his desk, was looking for ways to retire early and travel or play. But not this time.

Perhaps it is the tumbling economy and what it has done to our savings, but we talked about working for another decade. We would use the money we earn to travel and play, while we have the legs to carry us, we decided.

Why wait, when our health might betray us? Why save all our pennies for a day when we might not have the strength to spend them?

But back home, the crowd of retirees that made us feel so young and so vital, so superior and yet so grateful was quickly forgotten. There were 10 inches of snow waiting for Connie and Bill to shovel in upstate New York. My husband and I had to answer the demands of the extended parenthood for which we are oddly grateful. The kids needed us to troubleshoot -- again.

We are in an odd place these days, we baby boomers. One foot in the workplace and one in retirement, fearing we will be pushed out of one but unable to see ourselves in the other. Planning for the future and dreading its arrival. Sensing for the first time that that future is not open-ended, that it does not extend beyond the horizon.

Back at the office, the four of us were swamped by the demands of a workplace shrunk by recession. Soon, it was hard to remember how warm the Florida sun was. And all that other stuff, too.

susan.reimer@baltsun.com