Aging On The Outside Only
LIVING OUT LOUD: Going zero to sixty-something, tout de suite.
“Getting Old Ain’t For Sissies.” — Bette Davis
You don’t know what that means until you DO know what that means.
You hear all the stories, read all the articles, and see all the evidence laid out neatly before you, like a map, but first, you must read the map. In order to read the map, you must find your cheaters because you can’t SEE the map. You have to search for your cheaters because you put them down somewhere and now you can’t remember where you put them, even though you have a dozen or more pairs. You finally find a pair and make a victorious “Whoop-whoop” sound but now you’ve forgotten why you were looking for them in the first place.
Aging doesn’t happen quickly. It takes years and yet the realization of it happens overnight.
I’m not talking about the obvious stuff we all experience like the Rice Krispies sounds in our knees or selective hearing. I’m talking about the realization that keeps hitting me repeatedly, like a wet spaghetti noodle… I’m a sexagenarian. That sounds way hotter than it actually is unless I’m having a hot flash while saying it.
I don’t mind being 60-something but I think there are serious inequities here. At this age, I shouldn’t have to deal with, say, pimples. Pimples should be to wrinkles what sharks are to swimming in the desert. I still break out regularly. It may be because my skin still produces a fair amount of oil, which I know is a good thing. I have olive skin and thanks to my Italian heritage, my face can still get kind of oily. I see a little slick every morning and I take it with a grain of salt. Still. When I wake up in the morning and get greeted with an eruption the likes of Mt. Etna, I get a little chapped. Sometimes, it actually sits in the crease OF A WRINKLE. Nice.
Another inequity? Random hair growth. I have a hairy mole. I’ve had sprigs growing out of it since I was in my twenties so that’s not new. My hairy mole would bear fruit every few months, producing a thorn-like follicle that seemed to grow two inches overnight. It wouldn’t be there and then it would be jutting out of the side of my face like an appendage. I’ve plucked this same hair from this same mole a hundred times, then one day the damned hair turned white. WHITE??? Seriously? Are we playing hard to get now?? Trying to go all incognito?
Another thing that chafes my older sensibilities is the phrase, “You look SO good for your age.” Nothing produces the urge for me to whap somebody on the head faster. What does that even mean? You don’t look like you are knocking on Death’s door? You aren’t currently drooling into a cup? What are we supposed to look like at any age? I admit I am one of those people who looks at other aging folks and thinks, “Do I look THAT old?” I keep those thoughts safely to myself though and then when I always think I look pretty youthful FOR MY AGE, I catch a glimpse of my neck. It seems to be growing rings like a tree.
My Second Childhood
I still want to do the same things I did twenty or thirty years ago. God help the person who suggests I might be too old to do said thing. Maybe someday I’ll have to concede certain things but that isn’t today. Or tomorrow. What I’m trying to say is that the calendar shouldn’t be the litmus test of what we can do at any age. It’s our heart and spirit that should drive us regardless of what the mirror shows. I’ll pull up my wrinkly neck and strut forward into the next adventure … age be damned.
