On Another Year Passing

In a few days I'll once again be having a birthday (didn't I just have one?), so this weekend I was marking the event with my annual trip to the five-and-dime to see what they have to offer to stave off the never-ending signs of old age. This has become a tradition in the last few years. All year long, when I sit at the receptionist's desk to cover the phones while she goes to lunch, I read the "women's" magazines she keeps there. The ones telling 20-year-olds that they need two tons of special products to maintain "youthful-looking" skin. Right. They're 20. They have youthful-looking skin until that start dumping that crap on it. But us ladies on the wrong side of 40? We really should start looking at surgical enhancements or life may not be worth living much longer.

So after a year of absorbing the helpful hints brought to me by Maybelline, L'Oreal, Max Factor, and the like, I look in the mirror at the wrong side of 40 and wonder if there isn't something I can do. Hair color, but that goes without saying, I've been a bottle blonde since the 80s. A bath scrubber with a micro-abrasion attachment to peel away the dead skin, and a facial mask to moisturize and smooth out my "rough, uneven skin" (that still breaks out regularly -- wrinkles and zits: life is unfair). Of course, I have no faith in these things, but every year about this time, as I notice the popping joints pop louder in the morning and the backache takes a little longer to work itself out after getting out of bed and I'm covering more gray than brunette and I can't read the paper before 8:30 because even with glasses I can't see, I figure I owe it to myself to try something to make the years less noticeable. Come May 24th, I won't care again for another year. On May 24th, I'll still be me, same as May 22nd. I still won't be able to see, my ankles will still pop in the morning, and all the rest, but I'll have to get the child up for school and get myself off to the office and...really, it won't matter at all.


But this weekend, like so many pre-birthday weekends before, I'll take stock of all the signs of age that weren't there a year ago: How I can never find my sunglasses, how my hands are begining to resemble my grandmother's, what clothes I now look ridiculous wearing, how I can ride the train unmolested and flirtation-free. The rest of the year, these things won't matter. I don't know why they matter now.


As for the facial mask, except for a little redness, my face looks the same as it did an hour ago, worn out and a little crinkly at the edges. In 25 minutes, I'll be blonde again, for another six weeks at least. My "micro-abrasing" shower-scrubber hasn't erased a line, eased the pain in my back or stop my joints popping in the morning. Onions still give me unforgiving gas and indigestion, my hips are still be too big and too saggy, and I don't even want to think about my boobs. But life will go on, creaking and sagging, puffing and drooping.

And my daughter will continue to grow more beautiful every day. My to-be-read list will continue to grow, I'll keep discovering new music, new paintings, new parts of the world to visit. On Saturday, my daughter will take me on a picnic in the park (shhhh! It's a surprise, I'm not supposed to know), the sun's "harmful UV rays" will have another go at my skin, and I won't care a bit because I'll be too busy living life with my beautiful little girl to notice. And next week, we are off for our very first cruise (*insert mini-lecture on how people shouldn't wait until their 40s for their first trip on a ship), where there will be "damaging" sun and salt air and fun and grand adventure and I'll eat too much, but I won't care because I'll be too busy living life with my beautiful little girl to notice. So the summer will go, and fall and winter until that weekend before the next 23rd of May gets me wondering how I got so much older in just one year. And I'll look in the "women's" magazines and see promises of youthful skin, firmer breasts, instant weight loss and the rest, make a trip to the five-and-dime, make my annual concession to old-age, then get back to living life with my beautiful daughter. But who knows? Maybe next year the "women's" magazines will surprise me. Instead of telling me I'm fat, wrinkled, old and unattractive, they'll tell me to get out in those harmful UV rays, let my graying hair down, and go live life with my beautiful little girl.

*Mini-lecture on how people shouldn't wait until their 40s for their first trip on a ship (or plane bound for Paris or train to Istanbul or anything else): Lesson learned the hard and really stupid way is to make up your mind you're going, give it the same priority to give all the rest of your bills, surf the web of a killer deal, and go. The hardest part: making up your mind you're going. So what are you waiting for? GO!