Another Aging Post

It is twilight and a while ago the power went out for about an hour and so I set aside all of my plans which of course required electricity and went and laid down on the bed and read for awhile and just as I was falling asleep, the lights came on and I was jolted awake and got up and continued on with the life of electric lights, washing machine, food processor, hot water heater.

I can't tell you how old I feel today. Ancient and yes, crone-like. Bent to a task like any old peasant woman, although when I went to town to run errands and have lunch with Hank, I painted my eyelids and even lined my eyes and put on mascara and lipstick.
Still. Old.

The skin. What can you do about the skin? There is no elixir or pearl-like nutriment which will return it to its elasticity. And if there were, what would we do? Buy it by the barrel, dip our entire bodies in it every night and every morning? Ha!

It's funny how some days I am at peace with this aging process and able to make fun of it and remember that it was never my beauty I was known for, even if I was much prettier than I knew. Youth- there is no substitute. Wisdom is a fine enough trade-off and so is, some days, the vanity which must be let go if one is to remain sane, shaken off with a rueful laugh, an arm-full of bracelets making do where once there was smooth skin.

And then other days the mirror can not, will not lie. You catch yourself not posing, as you do when you face it. You see the way others must see you and there- there- who is that old woman? How does my face look when I screw it up to listen to my choices of bread at the sandwich place? When I am slowly backing up my car, when I am relaxed in sleep, when I am scowling over this computer, trying so hard to recover the words that I know are in this mind but which seem to have been lost in slack pockets of brain which surely by now is as un-elastic as the skin is, no matter how much they talk about the amazing plasticity of that organ.
Sure. Up to a point.

And perhaps today it is just the aching knee. I got up from the table at lunch and it took me a time and I grimaced and Hank, dear son, asked, "Are you okay?"
"Fine, once I get started," I said, and I am. Frisky as a little horse, but oh, the getting started.

Well. What can one do? Become one of those women who from the back look like teenagers with long, glossy hair and tiny hips who walk on pointy-toed shoes, and who, when you see their faces, you realize are grandmothers, starved to death and wending off old-age with every weapon in the arsenal including make up, plastic surgery, dieting, exercise and hot-bod togs but in fact, are fooling no one except perhaps themselves?
It's an option.
Not for me.

So why complain? Why not just be grateful for the fact that there is still enough strength here to walk my miles, to pick up my grandson when he holds his arms up, to heft the chicken food, to be alive at all?

I am not, really. I am just saying that I am not a perfect person and even I, here in my tiny dream world of chickens and grandson and loving husband and dirt and overalls see pictures of goddesses like Lauren Hutton and Helen Mirren and even though I KNOW I am not either one of those beautiful women and cannot, should not compare myself to them, it's so hard in this culture not to. I have been thinking a lot about this. How when I put on my old dead round man's Levi's I hitch 'em up and button and zip them like my husband does his and how, at the end of the day, they are so stretched out I can take them off without undoing them and how comfortable and comforting this is and who gives a shit how they look? And how women are wearing these spandex suck-'em-in jeans and oh yes, our bras which corral our bosoms and place them where they "should" be and it all just makes me wonder how far women have come since the age of corsets and passing out and girdles and garter belts and sanitary napkins which felt like wearing a two-by-four between our legs and, and, and...

When do we get to be who we are?

When we accept that ourselves. I think that is the answer.

Do we? Do we have a chance at accepting ourselves?
Do you? Do you accept yourself?

Just asking.

It's Friday night and I am asking.