When you turn 40 the machine starts breaking down. Has anyone noticed? Literally, the DAY I hit my 40s my eyes started to fail. I needed readers immediately and now I'm onto full time specs....if I could muster courage to visit the eye doctor.
Then there's the beard I'm growing. No, I'm not kidding! I'm like an old Greek woman, sprouting two inch beard hairs overnight. Only noticeable in the daylight, and enough to preoccupy you during meetings. Not cool....
The the sun damage started to appear. All at once. As thought I did all the damage on one day in my 20s. The fact is, the damage took more than a day. The sunbathing, burning and peeling took real dedication and I was the woman to do it. But I looked fabulous at the time.
Oh, and then there's the hair colour. I fear the day I must let it go grey, but that day is not today. In the meantime, I sport grey temples like an old labrador retriever.....as my husband mentioned jokingly one morning on the way to work.
There's an epidemic of working mothers drinking too much wine and slipping silently into alcoholism in their own homes. Not to make light of this serious situation, but I can kind of see why. Being an aging beauty queen is hard work!
The maintenance is increasingly expensive. There's the dying, the tweezing, the moisturizing, the abdominizing....and now the visits to physicians and dentists to have dinosaur teeth tended to.
And all while holding down a job and maintaining trophy wife status and measuring up to yoga moms in the neighbourhood. This is full time work my friends.
But the solace comes in the commiseration with friends. Thank goodness for aging pals who are experiencing the same wrinkles and sagging and greying temples. I appreciate friends who can lend me their Chapters reading glasses and tell me I look fashionable in them. And for those who compliment me on my low heeled boots and attempts to be hip.
I wouldn't want to be younger, as long as I have my beauty queen peers beside me, getting more elegant and wise together.
It's bizarre how quick it happens after 40 - I remember two weeks after that milestone standing around the playground moaning and groaning about my assorted aches, pains and failings along with the other 40+ moms and dads. 40 is like the pinnacle - a hill, if you will. Up and over!
ReplyDeleteAnd WTH is with the chin hairs and their magical ability to suddenly sprout when one is as far as humanly possible away from tweezers? I think WE should start a jewelry company - instead of charm bracelets we could dangle fashionable reading glasses and bedazzled tweezers and bunion pads from necklaces so we'd always have them when we need them. (Of course, we'd still wander from room to room trying to remember where we left them - till we forgot what we were looking for in the first place or finally notice them resting on our sagging bosoms...)
Not for the faint of heart, this aging business! I'm hoping a healthy sense of humour helps!