by Melissa K.

Though we may not want to admit it, trying to reckon aging is like a trip to the dentist that you've dreaded for months.  You know you are going to hate it.  I see the white hairs popping out on my head and look in the mirror and wonder what the heck is going on with my face.  Even though I exercise regularly sometimes getting out of bed is painful and I feel my joints stiffening.  I can't read the telephone book anymore and have to ask the wait help to read me the menu.  And so forth.  Those who are over forty know what I am talking about.

Aging sucks.  It's like Nora Ephron says in her book, "I Feel Bad About My Neck".

Every so often I read a book about age, and whoever's writing it says it's great to be old.  It's great to be wise and sage and mellow;  it's great to be at the point in life where you understand just what matters in life.  I cna't stand people who says things like this.

She adds in another chapter:

There are all sorts of books written for the older women.  They are as far as I can tell, uniformly upbeat and full of bromides and homilies about how pleasant life can be once one is free from all the nagging obligations of children, monthly periods, and in some cases, full-time jobs.  I find these books utterly useless, just as I found all the books I once read about menopause utterly useless.  Why do people write books that say it's better to be older than to be younger?  It's not better.  Even if you have all your marbles, you're constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday.  Even if you're in great shape, you can't chop an onion the way you used to and you can't ride a bicycle several miles without becoming a candidate for traction.  If you work, you're surrounded by young people who are plugged into the marketplace, the demographic, the zeitgeist; they want your job and someday soon they're going to get it.

-Nora Ephron

Now that is depressing.  Age is something that women especially, try to fight off, as is evidenced by the surge in the last few decades of people opting for plastic surgery to make everything bigger, higher and tighter.  It's everywhere, marketed especially for those who are set off in panic mode when the wrinkles and white hair and extra material in the waistline appear.

What can you do?  Not a whole lot, unless you are going to go under the knife, and judging by the photos that are published online with the results of such procedures, I can't say you are going to come out that much on the plus side.  Youth has it's definite advantages.

I see this in women who are losing the dew and beauty of their youth, desperately trying to reverse the clock and failing miserably.  Have you looked at the skin on a twenty-something year old?  That is what I mean.  Dove soap or not, they have had less exposure to life's stresses.

Aging puts us all on the same page.  We can fight it tooth and nail, but we are going to get there. Some of us will arrive later but we are all boarding the same flight.   We can be despondent and wring out hands over it, or we can just make the best of the rest of the ride here and determine not to let those wrinkles and spots prevent us from enjoying life to the fullest, even into our later years.

As Ephron puts it,

"I don't know why so much nonsense about age is written-although I can certainly understand that no one really wants to read anything that says aging sucks.  (ha ha, I just wrote that in the beginning of this entry)  We are a generation that has learned to believe we can do something about almost everything.  We are active-hell, we are proactive.  We are positive thinkers.  We will do crossword puzzles to ward off Alzheimer's and eat six almonds a day to ward off cancer.  We are in control.  Behind the wheel.  On the cutting edge.  We seek out the options.  We surf the net.

But there are some things that are absolutely, definitively, entirely uncontrollable.

I am dancing around the D word, but I don't mean to be coy.  When you cross into your sixties, your odds of dying-or of merely getting horribly sick on the way to dying-spike.  Death is a sniper.  It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know, it's everywhere.  You could be next.  But then you turn out not to be.  But then again you could be."  end

All of this should have me worried and lying awake in bed at night, but I can't.  I have to seize the day, cook rice, hang the laundry, look after my mom, buy groceries and remember to at least brush my teeth before I go to bed.   And I don't have time to worry about aging anymore, I have other things that will occupy my time and thoughts.  But if you have some samples of face cream, send them my way and I'll try them.  Thanks.