Image by Black Country Museums via FlickrCan we talk some more about aging? Can we?
I am 45. I am squarely midlife. And I mean that literally because I'm booked solid until ninety.
I've got wrinkles. I've got graying hair. That's OK. I expected those things. Here are the things I didn't expect:
1. My butt to get so really, really, flat. I mean there is no definition at all. From the backside, I'm like a door. From the frontside, well, not so much.
2. The skin on my hands to get so inelastic. If I pinch it, it doesn't spring back immediately. It just sort of deflates like egg whites that you haven't whipped enough.
3. My skin to get so dry. There's this great description of the lead character in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale using butter as moisturizer. I loved it, but I never got it. Not only do I get it now. I've done it.
I wouldn't say that I'm troubled by these things, but I have lingered over them. I know a lot of women get cosmetic surgery to negate the physical affects of aging. (Check out 70 year old Rachel Welch.) I don't have a problem with cosmetic surgery -- for other people. If Rachel wants to look like a hot young mama that's fine with me. But I'm holding onto my originals, wrinkles and flat butt included. To be me, I have to be honest about who I am. I am a woman squarely in midlife, and I look like it. I reserve the right to change my mind, but today at least, I want to be reminded by my mirror image that I am getting older and that I will one day die. That's the truth, and my body -- all our bodies -- are testimonies to that truth. That's not a bad thing. That's just a fact. That doesn't mean I'm eager to die or decay, but it does mean that I'm OK with where I am in my life, and I'm OK with knowing that things will end badly for me, as, indeed, they end badly for all of us.
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