.png "English"){kind=small}
If you have paid attention at all to the older people in your life, you might already know some of what I'm about to tell you. I thought I had paid attention and yet, here I am, getting surprised almost every day by some new aspect of growing older.
I want to point out that aging is a wonderful thing. Whenever you feel bad about having to add another candle to the yearly cake, just think of the alternative. Aging is wondrous and amazing. You won't always feel that way about it, but there you go. By the way, for reference, I myself am not yet 60 but no longer 50. Here goes (and this list is in no particular order):
Some of this might make you laugh so maybe go pee first...
Bunions. When I saw the misshapen side-knuckle on one of my big toes, I thought I had broken a bone that was healing back wrong.
Toenails. They get weird before you notice the bunions. One day, you no longer have cute little toenails that are normal. Somehow, when you weren't paying attention, your nails grew darker and thicker. Before you know it, you can never go polish-free without attracting stares from young people who cringe when you are wearing sandals. And good luck clipping these monsters without wearing safety goggles and warning anyone in the area to be ready to duck for cover at any moment.
Dry Feet. Of all the horrifying things that happened to my body as I got older, I think skin dryness has been the most annoying. But dry feet are on a whole other level. The only way I can explain it to you without showing photos (and that will never happen) is to tell you about the things I now have to use on my feet often: glycerin mixed with lotion mixed with oil mixed with anything that I think will soften, moisturize and camouflage the sandpaper that makes up my soles. Young people, I actually own tools that my SILs and I call foot-graters. Yes. Cheese-grater-type things made just for grating the dead, dry skin of the feet. Stop and think about that for a moment while you're mad about being too young to be old enough to do whatever thing you think we adults do that so fun.
Your health runs your schedule. Seriously. I once had my brother and SIL turn around halfway through a 4-hour road trip because I left my pillbox at home. Talk about "not leaving home without it". I set my clock to take certain medicines so it's not done on an empty stomach. I don't do things that require me to leave the house most Thursdays, Fridays, and, possibly Saturday mornings. Or I rearrange my medicine schedule so that I can leave the house on those days.
More things make you gassy. And bloated and constipated or... very much not constipated. I have become a connoisseur of fiber supplements. I'm sure Amazon and Google are tracking me and shaking their heads in confusion about my buying fluctuations of laxatives and, um, non-laxatives...
Dark spots on the face. I don't know if these are the infamous "age spots" that cosmetic brands are always trying to warn us about or not. I just know that one day, I spent a few minutes inspecting a weird infected pimple on the side of my face before I realized that I had never seen a pimple that was so dark and resistant to all the home remedies for pimples. This thing was like a spot that wanted to be a cute beauty mole but decided to be ugly instead. I now have several of these tiny little things on my face.
Your hair gets weird. It's true. My hair seems to go through a change with each passing decade. It's been coarser and less coarse; frizzy-dull and smooth-shiny; auburn-tinted, cinnamon-tinted, and grey-streaked. It's gone from thick and healthy but untameable to thick and lovely (that lasted about 6 years) to thick and needs so much work that I no longer just have a regular hair wash day but a day for deep conditioning, one for moisturizing only, and one for rotating products so my hair doesn't get bored and have a real hissy fit.
Your hair migrates. True again. And this one is lovely. The first migrating hair incident happened for me at work. I was sitting near the SIL I worked with at the time and she noticed me swatting at something on my face every now and then. She was curious. Was I being bothered by a pesky fly or mosquito or something? I told her that I couldn't get rid of a piece of lint or something on my chin. She came over to take a look and help me out. She then went into a fit of laughter. The "piece of lint or something" was a hair. A chin hair. A quite long and grey, hair the texture of a hair not found on the head but somewhere further down the body. I had chin hair. Okay, just one chin hair. Of course, I yanked that one right out but it had strong and deep roots. That thing comes back in the same exact spot ever so often and I have to take a pain pill, apply a numbing agent, and have someone to coach my breathing while I yank it out. If only the hair on my head was so strong.
Your favorite perfume will no longer be your favorite. It's a dry skin and changing body chemistry thing, folks.
And growing older isn't all about giving up on a lot of vanities. There's the stuff that happens that will make you wonder if the 7-year cell renewal of the human body doesn't include just becoming a totally different person altogether.
Sleeping patterns change. Over the past decade of my life, I have gone through cycles of needing less sleep at night to needing more sleep during the day. For long stretches, I will have insomnia, then I suddenly turn into Rip Van Winkle. I think it was around the age of 40 that I learned to love naps. For a while, I couldn't sit through a television commercial without going into a drug-like nod. (I remember laughing at my mother who once admitted going to sleep in church and waking herself up with a snore.) Depending on what mood my wonderfully and fearfully made body is in, I need to spray myself down with magnesium oil to get a good nights sleep or I have to run through 3 refills of the water reservoir on the Keurig to make it through to noon without going into a narcoleptic coma.
Calories become very important. When I was younger - birth to mid-30s - I could eat Paris and not gain even half a pound. At around 40, the bread and cookies and Moose's Tooth pizza and all the other yummy food I loved began to show. Not much. I just grew a little bit of a backside and actually needed a bra that came in sizes more defined than Tween-to-Teen. It was kind of awesome. Until I suddenly had to actually start paying attention to the clothes I wore because not just any old thing I snatched off a rack looked great. I had to worry about button "gaps" and whether or not pants gave me a "muffin" or not. (We won't even talk about when I got sick and gained - never lost - a lot of prednisone weight.) I'm now to the point where choosing between having a piece of bread with lunch or dinner is a serious decision.
On the other hand, my best friend struggled with keeping her weight down for years. As she ages, I often have to ask if she's eaten anything more than her usual fruit or half-sandwich. She "forgets" to eat. Food is just not as important to her as in yesteryear. Half of our conversational repertoire 5 years ago was sharing what yummy recipes we were going to be experimenting with. These days, she celebrates my weight losses and I cheer her gains. Life is strange.
Your tastebuds grow up. As a kid, I hated the usual things that kids tend to hate: liver and onions; broccoli with no cheese or dip; or anything halfway healthy or green that wasn't barbequed, fried, or served on a pizza. I think I was close to 35 when I started to like juices made from beets and carrots and kale. And I'm not talking the sugar-swamped concoctions from trendy brands but the hippie-pure stuff from the organic aisles in health food stores. I even got into wheatgrass shots for a while when I was seeing a guy who was too much into ugly shoes and scratchy-fiber clothing for our relationship to flourish.
About 15 years ago, I actually requested that my sister fix me some liver and onions "the way Mama used to make". And, boy, I never tasted anything so good as that. Since then, I have come to love collard greens and all kinds of beans (pinto, navy, lentil) and stews. I can literally have a meal of nothing but a bowl of steamed mixed vegetables with a little bit of salt and pepper. I once got on such a long collard green kick that the people at the store would see me headed to the product section and start picking out the best bunches for me. I have even very recently started seasoning my food with cayenne and red pepper flakes. Look at me! (I still only like chitlins half-a-closed-eye bite at a time but chitlins aren't healthy so...)
One of the best things about growing older is that you take time to get to know people better, including yourself.
You become more sensitive to noise. I've become that cranky woman who gets extremely annoyed by loud chatter, loud music, loud TVs or radios, and anything louder than the thoughts I'm trying to hear in my head while your car stereo is shaking windows and scaring small children.
You don't need a lot of friends. And you learn what it means to truly be a friend. My mother had a mantra that every child in our extended family heard: Not everyone is your "friend". She would teach us that we might think we knew a lot of people when we really only knew of them. More than acquaintances and less than friends.
I have known lots of people throughout my life. "Friends" I made at work or via other people. People who passed in and out of my life. Most of them were like lightning bugs, lighting up and delighting me but only briefly. I have had 4 got-your-back, thick-and-thin friends in my entire life - not including my siblings who are always Team Me. Two of my friends are no longer alive here on earth. The other two friends? I could call them from the moon saying I want to come home and they would try to find a way.
You care more about some things and less about others.
You realize you are both smarter than you thought and less intelligent than you always believed. "Book learning" has never come easily for me. I always had to study harder and concentrate deeper to even try keeping up with my brothers and sister. But some things can be learned if you study and concentrate. Some things come by living and making mistakes and watching. Wisdom is a real thing. Turn on the television or just sit back and listen to people. You will find that there are a lot of really stupid people labeled as "intelligent" and a lot of wise people who watch.
You grow to understand that everything is a choice. Even not making a choice is a choice. Christians out there will understand what I mean by this without any further ado. For everyone, doing or not doing, deciding or not deciding - be hot or cold but be not lukewarm.
You will become very well-acquainted with yourself. Not the 'you' that shows up at work or for lunch with friends. Not the 'you' at family get-togethers. You will spend more time with the ypu-person who has made your life choices and mistakes and wrong turns. For me, it took getting older to be both harder and easier on myself about my past. I had to look at the past as "what's done is done" but not let that be an excuse for any current actions.
You will find beauty & joy in different places and situations. As a cute (no modesty here!) and perky 20-something, I thought I knew what "beautiful" was. I thought I knew what would make me happy for life. I actually thought I knew these things! Imagine this: you don't like baked chicken. You really hate it - and especially if it's on the bone - not even the best-seasoned and most delicious chicken. Then you are stranded on an island with no food. All you have is a source of fresh water to keep you alive. You survive for weeks on this island (we're just imagining here so don't go factoid on me). Then, one day you are rescued by someone on a boat and all they have is fresh water to drink and baked chicken. Chicken on the bone. You won't reach land for another few weeks. How delicious do you think that baked chicken is going to taste? Probably like the best thing that any person ever ate before or will again.
As I get older, I know I haven't been starved of life or happiness. But I have gone through things that are just a natural part of living. These days, I find such beauty and joy in things I never had to pay much attention to. It might sound trite or corny to you but so many things in life represent that island survivor's meal. I can taste all the seasonings and nuances of flavor. I am appreciative and deeply satisfied in many ways. And because of life and how it can happen, I have fewer material riches than I ever have.
You will appreciate kindness in people maybe more than ever before.
You will find people attractive for different reasons than perhaps you did before.
You will realize how "rich" you are in ways that have nothing to do with money. I personally sometimes walk around my 650 square foot apartment and am amazed at how blessed I am. I feel like the richest person who ever lived. Don't let me mess around and have a day when I'm not sick or forgetful or physically off-balanced or depressed. Boy! That is a day that rivals anything any billionaire or celebrity can know.
These last bits won't be appreciated by just anyone. Those of you who don't believe in God might want to skip this.
Death becomes less frightening. I've not been afraid to die since I came to know the Lord. However... I often half-jokingly quip that it's not dying but the getting dead part that I'm afraid of. As I get older and older, I become less afraid of the "getting dead" part.
I pray more for people who don't believe, even though some would hate me for that. The older I get, the older my former pop-culture favorites get. Michael Jackson, Prince, and Lady Di. I find myself mourning and wondering about the fate of people I didn't "follow" as a fan. Just in the recent past, there have been the reported deaths of members of former boy bands, video vixens, songwriters, actors and actresses, and sports "stars".
Of course, I pray that everyone will come to know the Lord before they die but we hear get so much news coverage of some deaths. And I wonder if they had a change of heart or if they cried out for forgiveness. I only wonder because I know that I could have been someone dying without salvation.
You are bolder about sharing your "wisdom". I am not as shy about sharing what I have learned. If I think it's going to help someone else cope better with their depression and anxiety or whatever physical illness they have, I will try to speak up. I am not as shy about speaking to people about considering their eternal soul.
I am getting older. Any of us could be taking our last breath right at this moment, but getting older makes death more "in-reach" in my thoughts. Day by day, I have less time to speak up about things so I'm taking my shot.
There is a reason my blog name is "Free".
Peace
--Free
