The angst of aging gracefully

Connie’s Corner

Feeling and looking horrendous over the Thanksgiving holiday, thanks to a case of pneumonia, the last thing I wanted to do was look in the mirror. My wrinkles, blemishes and pores at 10X magnification are bad enough on a good day, but when ill? But almost as bothersome as the sickly image that would surely look back at me is my angst over aging gracefully.

I have a love-hate relationship with my mirror. To be honest, I bought the darn thing several years ago when I discovered a hair on my chin that felt like it was 3-inches long! As we rode back from a family gathering, I was mortified that it had gone undetected and I was certain I must have looked like Emma Thompson in “Nanny McPhee,” but this rogue hair was a mere foreshadowing of things to come!

In my younger years, I may have been a little less than understanding about older women who couldn’t seem to put their lipstick on straight or whose eye shadow seemed to curdle in the folds of their eyelids, but my own chickens are coming home to roost. I’m starting to color “outside the lines,” so to speak, and in hot weather my eye shadow is starting to resemble the eyelid version of the “Granny beads” you might have found around my neck when I was 6-years old.

Peering into a magnification mirror at skin that is almost three-quarters of a century old is very depressing, but it has saved me some embarrassment and it probably saved my life. With my regular mirror, I doubt I would have noticed the skin cancer developing below my right eye and my mirror forces me to monitor any changes that appear on my face.

I’m embarrassed to say that with each passing birthday, my psyche continues this mental tug-of-war when it comes to aging and cosmetics. In my fantasy of aging gracefully, I would be a composite of actresses Blythe Danner, Diane Keaton or even Glenn Close with beautiful silver hair and a very natural, makeup free face but that’s not going to happen for a lot of reasons. My ancestors didn’t gray early, I’ll never be tall and lean, and the truth is I feel better wearing cosmetics - I’d just love to feel that good when I’m not.

And then there’s life experience. I’ve spent more than my fair share of time in hospital emergency rooms, just another aging, tired senior face who people look past rather than at. I don’t want to be invisible if I can help it. Despite the date on my birth certificate, I want to be acknowledged and taken seriously, and that’s why I still make the effort.

So just what is aging gracefully? According to internet self-help guides, it means different things to different people. For some, it means looking old or showing the mileage but still moving forward with life and broadening one’s interests. For others, it’s in the carriage and posture. It’s a style!

And yet there are those for whom it’s letting go of mind, body and spirit to be what they want to be, or what they already are – only totally and unequivocally in a natural state.

Now what I did not see anywhere in my perusal of information about this topic, but firmly believe in, is that humor is essential to aging gracefully. So, to wrap this column up, I thought I’d share this quote by writer Nora Ephron from her bestseller, “I Feel Bad About My Neck.”

Bemoaning the state of her 60-plus year-old neck, Ephron writes, “Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn’t have to if it had a neck.”

Connie Clements is a freelance reporter and award-winning columnist. She writes feature news articles on a weekly basis and an opinion column as the mood strikes her.