January 16, 2013 -- Say It Isn’t So

I turned sixty today, yep, six zero. You notice, I didn’t use numbers, I used letters. When I look at the numbers, it scares me. How did this happen so quickly? I still remember playing in my back yard as a seven-year-old. Now I can’t remember what happened yesterday.

I look in the mirror in the morning and I don’t recognize who I see. Part of the problem is now that I had cataract surgery, I can actually see in the mirror in the morning. In the past, I didn’t put my contacts in until right before I was leaving for work. Now I get the full 20-20 view of the mess I am after rolling out of bed.

Starting from the top down, I have more wasteland on the top of my head than in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. When I actually get out of the shower and comb my hair, it takes me longer than when I was in college and had a mop on top of my head. It now takes an Architectural degree to place every stray hair just right so it looks like I still have some. Thank God I can never see my self from behind, or I would have a heart attack.

Then I catch the bags under my eyes. It looks like I am trying out to be Santa’s helper at Christmas because the bags are big enough to hold half of his toys for that evening’s delivery. I tilt my head back so the lighting is just right and the bags disappear and I reassure myself that I don’t look too bad for my age. Now, if I could just walk around that way all day without running into a wall.

Then I notice my neck. I am starting to look like one of those women that have to wear a scarf around her neck all of the time to hide all of the extra skin. To alleviate this, I try to stretch my neck out as much as possible and again I find a solution. Now I just need to learn how to walk with my neck stretched out and my head at a 45 degree angle.

As I continue my journey down the mirror I am reminded of one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes. Kramer and George’s dad came up with the scheme of the manzier. I have now gotten to the point of having bigger boobs that several of the girls that I dated in high school. To top it off, one is bigger and droopier than the other. You think I could at least be symmetrical.

The mirror continues to lie to me because I can’t possibly have love handles that big. I only weigh 20-25 pounds more than I did in high school yet my love handles weigh 30. It just isn’t fair that the scale just yells a little, but the mirror screams bloody murder.

Luckily, it isn’t a full length mirror. I will save you the horrors that have happened as I continue the trip southward. Yet, I shudder to think what all of this will look like if I can pull off a miracle and revisit this at seventy.

It was four years ago that I was just days away from finding out that I had multiple myeloma. After that back breaking news, I wondered if I would ever see this day. It probably sounds bad, but it struck me that I might not live as long as either of my parents, both of whom battled several issues throughout their lives. My father was told at the age of 26 that he probably didn’t have long to live and my mother had cancer at 45. I, on the other hand, only had acne to deal with until I was 56.

I may grumble about the way that gravity has taken me down a path of no return, but I thank God that I have an opportunity to complain about it. I may have gotten thinner on top and thicker in the middle, but I hope that I have gotten better over these sixty years. Not sure how many I have left, but I plan on making the most of them.

My father and his father did not live long enough to hold a grandchild and it is my goal to break that streak. Now that statement should not be taken by either of my boys to do this anytime soon, just a little forewarning that it’s in my plans to find joy in the fact that their children will drive them crazy like they did to their father. Sometimes, you just have to enjoy the simple things in life especially when there is no mirror to look into.