"Young woman weight training" by LyndaSanchez is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Dear Friends and Readers,
Apologies for being offline. A new opportunity prohibited me from being as prolific as I like. But that’s life, right? You think you get the hang of it, and if you’re lucky, something else comes along, and you gotta recalibrate. C’est la vie.
I’ve been thinking about aging lately. I woke up at 2 am and looked in the mirror, and my grandma looked back. “Where the fuck you been, grams?” I asked her.
I was looking back at the grandma who wouldn't shove a bar of Irish Spring bar into my mouth and send me to my room without ice cream for dropping the F-Bomb. There she was, the grandma who read dirty French novels, drank white lunch wine, and ate brie with a knife and fork.
When you’re my age, which I know many of you are, you’re at a crossroads. Do I try to lasso my youth with face cream, exercise, and lying about how old I am? Or do I lean in, let the grey hair flow, and come out old publicly, removing myself from the dating circuit forever? What to do? What to do?
The other day I was talking to my mom. I was at the doctor again. I said, “They totally forgot me, left me in the waiting room. I have entered the age of invisibility.” I continued, “I’m also at the age when I have to get checked for everything. I can’t imagine what it’s like being your age. You must live at the doctor.”
“Nope,” she said. “At my age, they don’t care anymore. They’re just waiting for us to die of something.”
Aging. You look at your kids and think, “that’s how old I once was.'“ Then you wake up in the wee hours, and an old woman looks back at you. The old woman says, “You think I was always an old woman?” And so it begins. To age or not to age is not the question. It is the answer.