My
daughter Anne lives in London where she is pursuing her passion for
acting. Because she, like most other
artists, is not able to support herself by her art, she is generally working at
least two part-time, minimum-wage jobs. One of her best non-acting gigs was a stint
working at the Mom’s Pavilion at the London Olympics three summers ago. This was a place for moms and other family
members of athletes to relax and be pampered.
One
of the perks of this job was a bunch of free samples of beauty products, and
when Anne visited me a couple of months later, she presented me with a jar of
very expensive face cream. I proceeded
to read the label aloud. I don’t
remember the exact wording, but the promise had to do with skin rejuvenation,
the elimination of wrinkles, and the all-around restoration of lost youth. “Oh,
honey,” I said, “That horse has already left the barn,” and we both laughed a
bit about the outlandish fountain-of-youth claims.
Of
course, I did use the stuff.
Here’s
the thing: I am no longer young, but neither
am I really old. My sun, however, is
setting. (Never is this clearer than
when I stand in front of a mirror with one of my two twenty-something daughters
at my side.) I would like to be able to
say that I am entirely sanguine about this, but that would be a lie. After all, it was only yesterday that I was
longing to leave my geeky girlhood behind and grow into my adult self. Am I really at the other end already?
When
I was maybe 10 or 11, skinny and awkward, my best friend’s much older brother
told his mother, who in turn told me, that I had beautiful eyes and would be a
knockout when I was older. I lived on
that for years.
In fact, I was never a
knockout, but from my vantage point 50 years later, I think I can safely say
that I was pretty on my good days.
Here’s the thing, though. I was
never conscious of my prettiness in the moment.
Whatever vanity I have had has always been retrospective. That is, I will look at old photos of myself
and think (ignoring some unfortunate hairdos), “Hey, I looked pretty good then.” This is always in comparison with how I look
now, whenever now has been. As I settle
into my “senior” years, it occurs to me that there is a lesson to be learned
here. How about if I view my current
self from the vantage point of, say, my 80-year-old self? I’m suddenly looking pretty good.
(Once, when I [well into my
50s] was walking through my mom’s assisted living facility, one of the other
residents said to her, ”Is that your daughter? Has she started her family yet?” Bless
her myopia. Oh, yes, I felt young among
the 80-year-olds.)
How
old are you? This is a pretty straightforward
question, right? Well, actually, no. Sure, the basic answer is simple: I am 65 years old. But, here’s the thing. Psychically, I feel about 40. And my soul, well, my soul is ageless. This leads to some confusion when I look in a
mirror. My 40-year-old self is startled
again and again to see her mother looking back at her from the mirror. And she is not polite about it: “Aak! Where
did you come from?” is her pointed cry.
And my soul is becoming quite bossy about her container.
“You’d better shape up, missy,” she whispers. “I’m going to need you for a while longer.”
So
much pressure.
Didn’t
I know I would get older? Well,
yes. I knew it, but I didn’t exactly expect
it. Mine was the generation that was
never going to grow old.
A
fantasy. Alas.
So,
how to do this gracefully?
This
is a question that will require some pondering.
For now, I will start here: No
cream is going to stop the passage of time.
But, as my skin thins, my soul will have the opportunity to shine
through.
It’s
time to focus on my soul.
It’s
time to be the person who I was always meant to be. And that has precious little to do with my
soul’s container.
And,
oh yes, I will look at myself through the eyes of an 80-year-old, and try to
appreciate where I am while I am here. But
I will not be looking to see whether I am pretty. I will be checking to see if I am courageous. If I am kind.
Grateful. Generous.
To
see if my soul is shining through.
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