Acting My Age
This year on Mother’s Day I decided what better day is there to start writing about my transformation into a natural looking senior. Who knows? I may eventually enter the select and seasoned group of those who are known as Super Seniors.
Super Seniors are individuals aged 85 years and older who reported never being diagnosed with cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, dementia or major pulmonary disease. My mother, Catherine, earned this status by living well until age 102.
Last fall, I decided to stop coloring my hair. It was a dark brown shade I had favored ever since I started to color my hair and cover the white years ago. At age 31, I had started trying to perfect Mother Nature. A picture of me with a large patch of white in my long dark hair shows me lovingly holding my first-born son aloft in celebration of a day together.
Like both of my parents, I was abundantly endowed with the gene that so slyly, spontaneously and creatively changes our beauty.
I tried to suppress my true nature for so many years. Now I am enjoying the emergence of my true physical presentation. It’s fun! Blond highlights? Sure I’ll take them! White eyebrows too? No choice! I am growing into this brow refashioning as well.
The eyebrows have been a surprise. Thick dark eyebrows are an inheritance from my father. I never anticipated that they would go white too! It was another change I wanted to hide at first. After trying to camouflage them daily for a month or two I realized that -- hold on! -- I don’t have to! I am free from that vanity now too! And now I totally look like myself ( until the next thing comes along)!
At this moment, my daughter is in early labor with her first child. We are all super-excited. This will be my third grandchild. It is a good time for me to embrace my white hair and to make the most of being a grandmother. It is a fun role in which I can act as a child again; enjoying nature and staying outside to enjoy the sights and scents that surround us and new freedom (in process, of course) from dyed hair
My daughter, like each of my three children, has a fair amount of silver hair mixed into her dark brown. This is our heritage!
Anticipating life with three grandchildren, I look forward to being a part of their unique growth and development. One of my occasional commentaries on life is “Expect the unexpected.” It helps to keep a healthy sense of humor and to be flexible, especially as we age
Speaking of being flexible, I want to describe a wellness practice that I have re-committed to over the course of this past year.
A year ago, I started to have back pain in a very small area of my thoracic spine. Diagnostic tests found nothing conclusive but one of the doctors I saw felt the area and said that it is arthritis. No effective follow-up was done by medical staff. It was clear to me that I had to seek ways to get better. Intuitively and based on past practice, I knew that yoga would definitely help me. I started to attend classes at a local yoga shala.
The first classes I took were yin restorative style to bring me into the basics of relaxing in various asanas. After a while I attended classes with all the teachers at the local shala. Things have gotten much better in terms of my physical condition and flexibility. The mid-back pain rarely makes an appearance now!
The changes in my hair color and exercise routine, as well as the birth of my granddaughter, are making 2022 a great year!
