Friday, December 7, 2012

Aging Gracefully ... Or Not



Dawn Sinclair

I don't know how people manage to age gracefully, do you? Is it something to do with deciding you like grey hair and wrinkles after all?

Or could it be to do with smiling in the face of adversity and accepting your lot, albeit a lousy deal of a lot?

For instance, when I was forty-something, a hearing specialist told me I had, surprisingly, an age related hearing loss equivalent to that of an average seventy year old. I laughed "gracefully" and accepted that I'd need hearing aids from now on in. Apparently, averages are made up of every age so I guess there were a few hundred year olds to balance the books.

In my fifties, my hair decided that it would skip the whole "going grey" fashion and head straight for white and, just to add spice to the equation, it thinned itself overnight by molting madly, apparently for no good reason except to lessen the amount of time it took to dry after a shower I suppose there is always a silver lining to be found then. I took myself off to the hairdressers where I was informed by a visiting top stylist that I was so lucky to have skipped grey because I still looked like a blonde but with even blonder natural highlights. Cool!

Yippy for me! Aging gracefully was becoming easier every day.
Approaching my sixties, I seemed to be taking an extra pill per day for every year I advanced, all prescribed by my doctor who informed me I was doing splendidly considering how long I'd had diabetes. 

Well, at least I wasn't jabbing myself with a needle and isn't it wonderful to realize the doc trusts me to balance my own meds now? Besides, soon I'd get free meds on the National Health. Yay for 60!

I suppose I can also count myself lucky I can still recall my childhood with utter clarity (though do not ask me what I had for dinner yesterday please!) and there are huge benefits to being absentminded on occasion because I can watch films I've seen before without realizing it until the last knockings when I suddenly exclaim "Oh yes, this is the one where the butler really did do it!" and never mind that my husband, who's probably watched it before also, says "Oh thanks, you've spoiled the ending for me now." Well, after all, he is two years my senior, bless him.

We still hold hands when we walk down the street these days, except now we do it to stop each other falling over - it still looks pretty graceful though, I suppose. And, when we are wearing the right pair of glasses (rose tinted of course) we don’t notice each other growing older because if we did, we’d have to also take note of our own wrinkly changes. It would certainly seem odd if my husband started looking younger than me, you have to agree.

Could I have aged less gracefully? I have no idea. I suppose I could have had Botox and face peels, worn more makeup and refused to drop my hems or wear lower heels but really, if I am honest, I don't think that not doing any of that that means that I am more graceful; it just means I am a lazy old coot who knows that at the heart of it all, age is just a label and on mine the message says: you’re as old as you feel little lady.


Dawn’s Poems…in Born Poets
Dawn Sinclair’s Songs…in Soundclick
Theresa Dawn Sinclair’s novels…in Amazon



4 comments:

Lillian Duncan said...

So funny!Thanks for you honesty!!

Linda Robinson said...

Laugh out loud funny! I loved it, Dawn.

Unknown said...

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you!

Dawn said...

THanks LIllian Linda and June :-)