WHEN DID MY BODY BECOME A SCIENCE PROJECT?

When I was pregnant with each of my two daughters, I felt as if I had loaned my body out to science.  Overnight, it changed shape and demanded strange food.  Buttons didn't button.  Coats wouldn't stretch far enough to keep me warm.  During the early, seasick weeks, one of the only foods I could tolerate was Campbell's tomato soup. (Does that even qualify as food?) If I had ever been in control of my body's size, shape, and general behavior, I was no longer. 

Following each birth, apart from the addition of a few (in my case, much-needed) pounds, my body resumed its former shape and behavior.  And so things remained for a couple of decades, until menopause reared its body-changing head. 

Ever since, I have been watching with fascination (sometimes bordering on horror or amusement) as my body has, once again, left my expectations behind. 

 

Here are a few examples:

 

I still have facial features, but they are getting soft, as is my belly. 

 

I haven't gained much weight, but what I have gained has settled around my middle. This is what my friend Karen calls "trunking" - the inevitable thickening around the waist that comes with age, due, in no little part to the loss of height.  (Yep, daily yoga stretches notwithstanding, I have lost over an inch.  I was 5'5 1/2," but always rounded it up to 5' 6." Now I am 5' 4 1/4" and am hanging onto that quarter inch for dear life.)

 

My hair is still stick-straight and I mostly wear it short, but now when I do try to grow it out, I have wings in the back.  I call this look “winged victory.”

 

Said hair is graying - sort of.  The gray is mostly around my ears.  I wish it would just all turn gray. When I grow it out, I have scary hanks of gray hair next to my face, backed by brown hair on the rest of my head. (No, I’m not going to color it – too lazy, and anyway hair dye turns my gray orange.)

 

Is my nose getting bigger?

My mother keeps showing up in my mirror.  Or sometimes it is my Aunt Pat. And not the youthful version of either of them . . .

 

I am not alone in being surprised by changes.  A friend recently reported that she was startled to find vertical lines along the outside edges of her eyes.  

 

 Another friend has this to say about losing height:  "I hate it.”

 

 (And why are we surprised?  Did we not think we would grow older?)

 

Here's the good news.  Karen, who is very wise, reminds me that no one is looking at us anymore.  Yep, women of our age are largely invisible.  Although this sometimes leaves me nostalgic for my youthful self, I mostly find it strangely comforting.  If no one is looking at me, I can wear and do whatever the hell I want. Of course, it would have been nice to feel this way when people were looking at me, but I am sorry to say, I was not that evolved.  

 

Now, though, as I have written about before, I have less ego involvement in my looks. (Of course, my ego hasn’t entirely shut up, but on good days it’s mostly muzzled.)  In general, my current goal vis a vis my appearance can be summed up as don't embarrass the kids.

 

It can be fun to surprise them, though.  A few years ago, I decided to wear a dress to a family brunch. (Mostly, to leave plenty of room for the food.) A granddaughter, who was four at the time, looked me up and down and said "Dama, I haven't seen you look this fancy in years."  Given her age, "in years" was easily translatable to "ever." (One of the girls couldn't say grandma and grandpa when she was a toddler, so we became dama and dapa.)

 

And if no one is looking at us anymore, this is even more true during the current pandemic.  Almost no one except my husband gets to see me without a mask and, I am happy to report, he thinks I am young and cute no matter how I present.   (And I do present badly at times.)

 

Not being looked at can be a blessing.  Last spring, while salons were closed due to the pandemic, my hair grew to a point that could only be described as Captain Kangaroo on a bad day.  For those of you too young to remember, here he is:

Happily, I did not grow a mustache.  As the pandemic drags on, my hair has again reached that alarming half-grown-out state.  This time, I am calling it my Julie-Andrews-in-The-Sound-of-Music look  – only straighter and messier. (Here's Julie - possibly looking concerned over the state of my hair . . .)

 

In any event, there are ears to tuck hair behind and baseball caps to cover growing-out woes.  So, hair is the least of it. 

 

In my last post, I wrote about Forrest Church's admonition to "want what you have." This seemed pretty reasonable as I applied it to the wonderful bounty that is my life. But, can I want this body?  I think I can. At least, most of the time. The soft belly is the result of bringing two amazing beings into the world.  The surgical scars are the result of operations, one of which saved my life, and the others of which brought me relief from pain or discomfort.  All of the changes and marks in and on my body are signs of what it took to get me here.  And it’s glad I am to be here. So, I will want what I have -- a body that has carried me this far.  

 

And I will remember that no one is looking at me, anyway.