ON AGING — 2

What to send the folks back home.

SGHolland ©2017

’Tis the season for assembling family newsletters again. And choosing photos that show off the West Coast family in the best light so that the East Coast family gets a rosy picture.

That’s not hard to do for the younger portion of the family. Some of them are fussy about which photos go out, wanting them to look perfect. Some pictures of them ARE perfect and are easy to find. But then there’s a sticky problem.

Where are the looking-good photos of me?

I find it interesting that of the photos taken just a few days ago at Thanksgiving, there was only one sent to me by my daughter that had me in it and it was an action profile shot of me lighting candles. Candle-light was helpful, but surely not helpful enough to disguise the funny look on my face that candle-lighting evokes! Who knew? Why did I squinch up my mouth like that to light a candle?

Well, the funny “mouth-english” explains a lot about all those little wrinkles that people on the cusp of their 8th decade of aging get around their lips. You know — the vertical ones that make the pursed up mouth look exactly like a volcano vent? And what that does to my chin is unkind. My chin is small enough without being tucked back as I purse my lips.

The documentation of my appearance changes rapidly each year now, and there are rare photos that make me look young and vivacious these days. What used to be a bit of matronly softness around my face has now done some moving downward and is not so much soft as draping from cheekbones, with the folds down below the chin a bit.

Am I vain? Not vain enough, some of my family think. I am offered the use of three way mirrors and a super magnifier to doctor up my face. I used it the other day, actually, to use something magical on a black eye I got from a little painting falling on my face from above! It worked fine, and I was grateful. But I walked away before examining all the rest of my facial topography. Not all of it can be helped by concealer.

So I am dismissing all that stuff as being something for younger people to be anxious about, and just say I earned my wrinkles and at least more of them came from smiling and laughing than from being angry and surly and sad.

So, back to the matter of pictures. I did find an honest photo of myself to include in the rogue’s gallery. It is of me being given a Christmas hug nearly a year ago by my dear son who towers over me and is, himself, developing some handsome, good laugh lines in his face, I notice.

It helps to know that wrinkles happen to my cousins on the East Coast just as much as they happen here. They were born about the same time I was.

I’ll bet they are looking for the least alarming photos of themselves to send to me!

SGHolland ©2017