I found myself feeling particularly old this morning -- physically -- which put me in mind of a variety of aging-related issues, Here's one. Have you ever seen a play, a high school play, where some actor is playing someone old? This effect is generally accomplished by putting powder in the kid's hair so it looks kind of a uniform battleship gray, and compounded by the kid wearing old-style clothes. You see it sometimes on a sitcom, too, where they're flash-forwarding to a character's later years. Gray hair, flowery dresses or baggy suits.
I think that's what we all expect to grow old into. When we're young, whether that means we're kids or just under forty, we imagine transitioning smoothly into our seventies, gray hair and funny clothes. And that's it.
I'm finding this not to be so much the case. Now, I am not a person who is troubled in the least by "getting old." I am relishing my fifties, and I envision no facelifts in my future. Life takes its course. Grandparents should be essentially old people (even if you're a grandparent in your forties, you're still two generations removed from the little ones, and therefore old at least in comparison.)
There are many aspects to the aging process: medical, emotional, physical, even appearance. What's striking me today is the necessary change in mindset as the process takes turns that our younger selves could never have imagined, or anticipated. One of the things that I've noticed is the effect of blood pressure medication on one's view of oneself. If you had asked me when I was 30, I would have said matter-of-factly, Well, sure, lots of people take blood pressure medication. You need it, you take it, and be glad that it exists. Case closed. But I have noticed that people in general tend to freak out when they're put on it. It's as if they can't believe that this is happening to them! Not because it means they're old, but because it means they're sick! They have a condition, one that needs lifelong treatment. Each time I see it happen in someone I can't believe he or she is that foolish, but of course, I reacted the same foolish way when I went on it. Even people who are already on life-saving medication forever -- like thryoid meds -- react the same.
(I may have told this before, but when my father had his heart attack -- he was 63 -- and was in the coronary care unit for some time after, he said, more than once, with startling incredulity "Imagine! I had a heart attack! Can you believe it, that I, of all people, had a heart attack?" He was about 100 pounds overweight and hadn't been to a doctor since World War II, and both of his parents had died of cardiovascular disease. Imagine him having a heart attack? There was no one in the world more likely to have one.)
Appearance-wise, I think I have really been confused by my recent realization that I will probably never in my life have a full head of gray hair. It's just not fitting in with my lifelong sense of how I will personally be when I'm old. Er. And it's not as if I have changed in any way; it's just that I only now realized that if all I have is two little patches of gray at 52, then I'm unlikely ever to have all gray hair. Or all white. I expected gray hair, like the kids in the play have.
When I was in high school, I had waist-length hair. It never crossed my mind that one day I would have waist-length boobs. Yes, I had a mother and a grandmother, and eyes. I swear, I thought they were just ... I don't know what I thought they were, but it never occurred to me that this particular trait was a) age-related, and b) genetic. It was simply not part of what I expected to be at 50.
I can also never quite get over the change in my skin. This one knocks me out all the time. Once again, I present my Grandma Ida and four of her seven sisters:
Ida is smack in middle, white-haired, appropriately wrinkled. Her oldest sister, Becky, the littlest one, lived with her for most of my childhood, and so was like a spare grandparent to me. Her skin fascinated me. It seemed to be paper-thin, paper-white, and exquisitely wrinkled. I could study her face and hands endlessly. She too was white haired, beautifully so. (The others in the picture dyed their hair.)
I am not wrinkled; I have no idea why. But my skin is just different than it was: not taut, a little more veiny, a little more -- okay, a lot more -- spotty here and there. Old scars are exaggerated, acne or chicken pox. The dark circles under my eyes have taken up permanent residence. I expected wrinkles, not ... yuck. I expected white hair, eventually, which is most certainly not coming; Ida and Becky were born blonde and so went from blonde to white. My blah brown has a lot farther to go
Why did I feel old this morning? Ah, a little indigestion, a little ache and pain here or there, a little not too much pep to make my lunch for work, let alone work out. I'm not bummed or disturbed about it all, except in that most superfical craving for gray/white hair. It just seemed really obvious today.
And then, I spent my day at work making I.D. cards for freshmen, and dealing with the crazy reunion people, and contacting the people working on the school alumni directory, and fending off an offensive interview for the newspaper, and I got home and thought, Maybe retirement would be pretty nice, not dealing with all that miscellaneous crap all the time. I've always thought of retirement before in terms of being home all day and doing what I want and relaxing and such. I never looked at it as the actual cessation of all those odd tasks and jobs I do that I don't actually enjoy at all. Once again, perspective proves to be everything.
