Admittedly, my friend and I are no longer spring chickens,and it has been quite some time since the mirror was our friend.
Photo from The Authored Ascension.
The ‘un-friending’ of the looking glass began with an unforgivable deception! The incident occurred when the faces we saw reflected were not ours but were that of our aged parents!
That was a fright not to be forgotten or forgiven.
From then on, the mirror gets only a cursory glance when applying lipstick to our less than luscious lips or brushing our hair which is the only “Fifty Shades of Gray” in our lives.
Vanity has become such a curse.
The other day, my eyes accidentally hovered too long on the mirror and, horror of horrors, I noted that my finely sculpted biceps were sagging. Yes, sagging! “When did that happen?” I cried in disbelief.
Looking for sympathy, I told my friend about this vision from hell. She, in turn, whimpered, “That’s nothing. My thighs have turned to jelly and wiggle-wobble when I walk!”
She was visibly shaken by this discovery.
Not to be outdone, I lamented that the inch and a half I lost in height had rolled itself down to my ever-widening waist!
My friend topped that catastrophe by revealing that masking tape now failed as an adjunct to the ‘lift and separate’ bra.
As for the other flopping bits, the only remedy was all encompassing spandex, two sizes too small. It molded us into some sort of shape but it inhibited our breathing to the point of our turning blue.
We had to ditch that remedy.
With the arsenal of quick fixes almost depleted, sagging and bagging has become our new reality. Our bodies gave the cliche “Let it all hang out” a whole new definition.
In short, aging was a sinister conspiracy.
How could this be happening to us of all people? We feel so young and alive. We ‘re curious about life and love to stretch our brains around new ideas.
When out for our weekly latte’s at Starbucks (we are wanna-be yuppies), we giggle like school girls as we talk about the men in our lives, past and present, the ones who are still vertical and mobile.
We blatantly ogle handsome creatures picked up on our highly tuned radar. A roar of laughter erupts when we realize that the older person we are commenting on is our age or worse yet, younger.
“What the heck does that make us?” I demand to know of my friend.
“Old!” is her unwavering retort.
Boisterous banshee howls ensue causing other latte connoisseurs to fear for our sanity, or was that the word ‘senility’ I heard mumbled?
Old, heavens no, we’re not old!
Our mature contours are merely camouflage for our forever-young island woman’s spirit.
Written by Carol Fyfe-Wilson.
Carol is a mother of 6 with 5 boys, 3 of whom were adopted; one was Canadian born and the other 2 were from 3rd world counties and those 2 have moderate to profound ADD.
Her formal education focused on Psychology and Sociology. For the last 20 years she worked as an academic and behavioral support person within 4 B.C school districts and one college. She also sat as a Fetal Alcohol Syndrome steering committee and was a resource person for special needs adoptive parents.
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While I am still young at 57 years old I continue to embrace my youth with beginnings of the odd arthritic ache. I often recall and embrace the younger years behind me and the Middle aged years I’m working with now. I find myself more and more telling those around me young and old how vigorous and vital I was and I’m still trying to be. I find myself giving more advice to the young and trying to get more advice from those older than me.
Alas while my aged years arrive and my very handsome chest just becomes a chest and my arms which were once pipes slowly become arms again and while the beauteous firm butt has now become a flattened butt I do still have at least (I hope) the power of the mind in my favour for many years yet to come. As I am sure many of us have said and heard we are not necessarily getting older we are in fact like a fine wine improving with age. Oh, if only this were so. I say, let the aging process continue especially since as my father used to say “it is better than the alternative”. Clearly he was a wise man!
To the writers and publishers of the leading story written by Carol and in some ways co-written by her friend, I would like to thank you for putting a smile on my face and giving me one more story to tell.
Thank you very much Stan.
I am sure your long-standing friends still think of you with envy as the guy with the perfect butt, handsome chest and muscled arms–very buff indeed. In my mind’s eye, my school chums still are young looking, vibrant and quick to laugh. Some of us admit our children are old enough to be our siblings or in my case, they are now older than I am, lol.
Cheers
Not old my dear, but ripening which has good and bad connotations. Thank you for the laugh.