Tag: aging gracefully

Heaven’s Waiting Room

People like to say that Florida, where I live, is Heaven’s waiting room. There are a lot of older people in Florida, that is true. However, I must add that the older people in Florida are among the healthiest, “youngest” elderly citizens whom I have ever encountered.

There is a man who lives in my neighborhood, who I have only talked to a handful of times, yet I consider him to be a major inspiration for what I want to be like when I am elderly. He is in his 80s and every time that I see him (which I feel like happens on almost a daily basis), he is doing two things: smiling and exercising. This man waves to everyone, whether he is walking or biking. I don’t think that I have ever encountered him in a bad mood, even when he was an officer for our neighborhood’s homeowner’s association. (This is no easy feat.)

Pablo Picasso said that we don’t age – we ripen. Florida is a good state to ripen in. Smiling and exercise and sunshine are good conditions to ripen in. This man proves the point that age is just an attitude. I think all of us who are getting older should have gratitude for that fact. It means that we have been given more days to age and to ripen. Every day that we are alive is a precious gift of wonder and miracles. There is no wonder why my neighbor is smiling and soaking in the sunshine as he waves to everyone on his bike. He gets it.

Holiday Hottie

Recently I read this question/answer in Quora.  The questioner asked, “What age is considered middle age?”  The best voted answer came from a writer named Rufus Evison.  He said, “It keeps changing.  The important thing is not to give up making an effort.  If you are resting on your laurels and getting fatter, that is middle age.”

The truth hurts.  Today I am making an effort.  I am going into the salon for my pre-holiday beauty refresh.  I will be there for hours and hours.  That is definitely a sign of middle age for women – the older you are, the longer you will spend in the hair salon.  We have a couple of holiday parties coming up this weekend and I am making my effort to try to look like I am just at the early stages of middle age.  I’m going to try to make the hours and hours spent in the salon today, look more like an “effortless, popped out of bed, looking this way” freshness at the parties.  Ha!

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve mentioned eating cookies and other holiday treats a lot in my blog, in recent weeks.  Ugh. It shows.  And I don’t live up north, so I can’t hide those few extra pounds in clothing layers, bulky Christmas sweaters and oversized coats.  Double ugh.  I wish that these parties were costume parties with themes like Best Jolly Santa or Fattest Frosty.

I read once that you can look completely “finished” if you just put your hair in a neat, tidy, nape pony tail, wear over-sized sunglasses and bright lipstick.  That’s been my “go-to” look lately.  That, or baseball caps, or even just my warm, fuzzy robe, have been the “holiday look” for me, so far.  I get that these are pretty weak laurels to rest on, Rufus.  So, it’s off to the salon, I go.  If I really want to look younger than middle age and look like a “holiday hottie”, I may have to stay at the salon throughout the holidays, and be ready just in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations.  Hmmmmmm . . . . 

Awkward Stage

A couple of weeks ago, I took my eldest son and my daughter who is my youngest child to lunch (I call them my Alpha and my Omega).  We went to a restaurant I had never been to before that is known for its nightly shows and bands.  When I asked our waiter what show he would recommend, he looked at me and without a stutter he said, “Oh, definitely Throwback Thursday.  My mom loves that show.”  Ouch.

Now, he was right.  I am definitely old enough to be his mom.  And I love 80s/90s music, because that’s the music I was brought up on, but ugh, I didn’t want him to notice that fact.  I didn’t want him to look at me and think “Throwback.”

I think that I’m at that awkward stage of my Second Half of Adulting.  It’s similar to the one I went through in my First Half of Adulting, when I was just a preteen.  That first awkward stage involved being stuck between being a kid and being a young adult.  The big dilemma at that stage was, “Do I still want to play with my toys or do I want to kiss boys?”  The second awkward stage is coming to the acceptance that the stuff that I like is starting to be considered a little “outdated”, but not old enough to be considered “retro and cool.”  The second awkward stage is the awakening to the fact that I’m not necessarily part of the mover/shaker crowd anymore.  The marketers and the trend watchers are more interested in what my kids are buying and doing than in me anymore.  And there’s a conflict because I’m not sure I want to move out of the First Half of Adulting.  I still have two kids at home and unfortunately, retirement seems quite far away, but I’m starting to not fit in with the First Halfers anymore either.

It’s subtle changes you notice when you are moving out of your First Half of Adulting. It’s like when you see the Barbie you played with as a kid, now in the window of an antiques store, or you start realizing that you don’t really know who 85% of the people on the cover of the gossip magazines are anymore.  The frequency of being called “Ma’am” goes up a notch.  Last year I had a part-time job where I shared a cubicle area with a couple of millennial women.  We were talking about weekend plans and I said that my husband and I were going to Hall and Oates.  My coworker said, “Oh cool, is that an island?”

The Second Half of Adulting is still new to me.  So, it’s hard to “own it” with confidence.  I know that my husband and I could not pull off Hipster with any kind of grace.  Tattoos, nose piercings, pink streaked hair, woolly beards and beanies aren’t part of our middle aged comfort zone.  But at the same token, I’m not ready to shop for retirement communities yet, either.  It’s funny how life cycles around.  I never dreamed I’d have to go through another “awkward stage” but I guess these are the stages in life that you must go through to figure out what you really want next.  You get so uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, that you finally accept your new role, your new place in society with confidence.  You’re the “record player” now because you’re cool again.  And you never stopped being a record player, it’s just that you’ve stopped apologizing for being a record player and you’ve stopped trying to turn into Spotify.   With your new self confidence and self worth, people remember that you’ve always been pretty amazing and that that you still have an important role to play, it’s just shifted a little. And maybe that’s not so bad.