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As You Age, Meet Yourself Where You Are By Judith Lindbergh
It was dark and cold as I drove over the hill, my son in the passenger seat beside me. At the stop sign, I reached to raise the temperature dial, my hand moving into the green glow of the dashboard light. Suddenly I noticed the strange, serpentine scales: the back of my hand, aging before my eyes.
"Do you see that?" My midlife panic rose up before I could tamp it down.
"What's wrong with your hand?" my son gasped. "It's like a time warp — like what it'll look like when you're really old."
Really old … It's a concept that, increasingly, doesn't feel so far away.
one dad joked about his upcoming "big birthday," exchanging glances when he added "5-0."
“I proudly flaunted my curly, post-COVID gray mane as a fashion statement until one mother whispered, "You'd look ten years younger if you dyed it."
And throughout the weekend, I proudly flaunted my curly, post-COVID gray mane as a fashion statement until one mother whispered, "You'd look ten years younger if you dyed it." It's easy to imagine that we can repel aging for a while. That night of the serpentine scales on my hand, I went home and hit the hand cream hard. But it won't go on forever. It shouldn't and can't. So, as I ease into the adjustments that aging requires, I remember the comment I make at every birthday: "It's better than the alternative." Another day, another ache, another pound, another step from what was to what is to come … Maybe being older isn't so bad.
Coming to terms with aging is like wrestling a bear. You know you cannot win, no matter your skills or precautions. In the early years, there are moments of triumph when someone assumes that you're younger than you are, followed by gradually more frequent moments of denial: "I still look good," segueing slowly into self-flagellation: "Stop fooling yourself," until, finally, those rare moments of graceful acceptance. Perhaps it is easier for me to maintain my denial because I had children quite late. Most of the parents at our sons' college drop-offs were at least a decade younger than my husband and me. It was easy to pretend we fit in. We just kept quiet when
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JULY 2023
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