A question of aging

Recently I noticed an itching sensation in my arms and legs. So, like most busy mothers, I ignored it for about a week and a half. When I just could not sleep due to all the itching, I made myself go to the doctor, fully expecting to have her tell me I have a rash.

My physician said to me: “Look at your skin. Look at your arms and legs; do you see how dry your skin is? You are getting to an age where you are going to start seeing changes in your body.”  I’d have rather she said: “You have scabies.”

I really do like my doctor, but she might as well have just said: “Oh, honey, you’re just old. You’re getting to an age where your skin and all your parts will just dry up and blow away. But you won‘t be needing them anyway after your done being a stay-at-home mom and a supportive wife, manning the fort alone while your husband is off advancing his career. He will be leaving you for a much younger woman—with softer skin.”

I may be overanalyzing. As I sat in her office, I imagined myself as a beautiful oleander, strong enough to stand the desert heat, then knocked down by the wind and left on the ground to shrivel up.

After leaving her office, I instantly ran to the sisterhood of the Facebook. Knowing there is safety in numbers, I collaborated with other pre-middleaged, dried up oleanders. (Just one dried up oleander alone can cause a small upset, but together we are deadly.) After my friends reassured me that I was not ready for a walker, I stood in front of a mirror and took a good look at myself. Am I really getting older? First of all, everyone has cellulite, but my hands were dry; I do not have crow’s feet, but am I carrying a kangaroo in that pouch? I have noticed that grooming unwanted hairs on my body does feel like a day of landscaping.

Oh, my gosh, it’s true! I’m only 36. That’s just two years older than Jon Gosselin, and we all know what happened to him when he realized how old he was.

Part of life is about coming of age, and I’m not talking about the fact that now you have to appear in adult court. But that life, as you know it, is always changing, usually when you’re most comfortable. One day you’re an individual, and then little by little you start to look like your mother. Which is frightening because people tell her she looks like her mom, and what hope does that leave you?

When I was pregnant with my first son Alex, my baby shower was at the top of a small hill. When I looked out the window I had a perfect silhouette of my grandmother and her two sisters and a brother-in-law all walking a straight line up the hill. One deaf, one blind with a cane, one in a wheelchair with her husband pushing her. All four of them slowly and methodically moving up the hill together. They looked like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” I couldn’t help but think that in this short time we have here on earth we just go from diapers to Depends.

It’s worth it!

Those old people are filled with so much interesting family history. Stories of migrating to new places, setting out on one journey and winding up in another. They can tell us where we came from and why we moved to where we are. They can tell us what it is like to watch the world change. And you will do the same; you just don’t know it yet. Until you’re old and using all your strength to march up a hill to get to your granddaughter’s baby shower–then you’ll tell them about your first Atari and when your parents brought home that Commodore 64, and everybody gathered around like it was the first television. The first time you saw a microwave oven and how, when you were young, the mailman would come right to your front door six days a week.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe in “growing old gracefully.” That’s what people say when they don’t pass the psych exam for plastic surgery. We can’t all look like Raquel Welch, but maybe we can buy some of the parts. For now I plan to Botox. I buy Oil of Old Lady by the gallon. My shelves are back-stocked with sunscreen, and I will do everything short of visiting a taxidermist to replace old parts, even my teeth. Dentures are the best invention ever. I am so tired of flossing. Just to be able to snatch the teeth out of my mouth and put them in a jar with some tablets; it’s a relief really.

I know I am getting older, and we all may be able to sidestep “father time” for a while, but in the end the old man always catches up. While I am still able to remember my age, I would just like to try and forget about it for a while!

(Erin Wheeler is a mother of two living in the Glennwilde subdivision.)
 
Submitted photo