Ava Gardner was the most beautiful woman in the world, and it’s wonderful that she didn’t cut up her face. She addressed aging by picking up her chin and receiving the light in a better way. And she looked like a woman. She never tried to look like a girl. ~Sharon Stone
Somewhat unusually, I’m editing an academic paper for a peer-reviewed journal, in a discipline that’s outside my own. This means the jargon sounds very dumb to me. 
And I quickly race to acknowledge that the jargon in my own discipline likely sounds dumb to people in other areas. This one is about cathected objects for Latin American identitarian thinking. I have to keep reading it over and over just to get it. I know you can add -ism to the end of anything, but Latin Americanism just doesn’t make sense to me, no matter how many times I read it.
And so I am here, avoiding work. It’ll bite me in the butt later this week, my procrastination, but whatever. How’s about a couple beautiful women?
beautiful 62-year old Mary Louise Streep
Where even to begin with this gorgeous photograph. The thing about Meryl Streep is her gaze, always, and it’s arresting in this photograph. But what grabs me and keeps me coming back to stare at her face is the softness, the creases, the tissue-ey luxury of her skin. And I love the way her lipstick has bled into the feathery lines around her mouth. I love this photograph, and I love these two things she said recently:
[2009] My daughters had helped me to stop worrying about my appearance over the years. I wasted so many years thinking I wasn’t pretty enough and why didn’t I have Jessica Lange’s body or someone else’s legs? What a waste of time.
[commenting recently on what she'd like people to take away from her newest movie Iron Lady about M. Thatcher] I would like to think that everybody that got on a subway and saw some old lady sitting across from them, that they would imagine that a whole huge life lay behind all those wrinkles, and that seemingly nondescript, forgettable [face]. I mean, there is almost nothing less interesting in our consumerist society than an old lady. Um … dismissed. We don’t make movies for her. We don’t give a damn. You can’t sell her anything, she doesn’t buy anything. But just the idea that everything — the whole panoply of human experience, births, deaths, struggles, joy — everything’s in there. And just to imagine that. That’s what I would hope.
It’s so funny the way our daughters help us grow; my daughter also helped me stop worrying about my appearance. Thank you again for that, Marnie.
And then here’s another true beauty. I confess to a secret about this one; you may be surprised by this (I always am) but I’ve been told my whole life that I look like Diane Keaton. Actually, I think it’s just that we both have big smiles and similar cheekbones, and I think we share a similar Golly, gee! sensibility. And I can’t tell you how similar my husband and I are to Annie Hall and Alvy Singer, but that’s a whole different thing.
gorgeous almost-66-year-old Diane Hall
Look at those gorgeous faces! I know they’re celebrities, with lives very different from mine, but there’s something that feels authentic about them and I love that they both put their beautiful 60+-year-old faces out for close-ups. I love that their faces show their ages, and I love that they both seem to recognize their own beauty.
I’m usually very surprised by the kinds of searches that bring people to my blog (someone in the Bronx always searches me by name, and I’d love to know who you are!). “Crazy Train” is a very common search — I used that in a post about a nutty subway trip — as is “woman with big feet” which takes people to a post I wrote about funny proverbs. And then there are the ones that freak me out a little bit, of a creepy sexual nature. I don’t want to type them here and increase the possibility that someone making that search could land here. Curiously, 95% of those searches originate from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. I counted. Over the last five days, you’ve arrived from these places:
such far-flung visitors! Hi, y'all!
No one from Australia in the last 5 days, and never anyone from Africa.
And finally, coming on the heels of my little corneal abrasion day o’misery: I have a second-degree burn on my left thumb. Sunday night I was in a happy frenzy of assembling all the goodies for a box to send to Austin, filled with Christmas gifts. I was making tomato soup in the kitchen and wasn’t paying close enough attention; I heard it furiously boiling over, so I ran into the kitchen and grabbed it off the stove. I’d placed my giant soup mug in the sink and I grabbed the handle and poured the boiling soup into the mug but somehow missed, and poured it all over my thumb. The whole thumb immediately turned a bright red, and the burn went down onto my hand. All night long I was in a lot of pain, and kept a baggie filled with ice on it. It blistered, and there are blisters underneath the blisters. It’s awful-looking, and it’s probably going to peel and who knows what will happen. At this point, as long as I don’t accidentally scratch it, it actually has no feeling at all. I can lightly stroke the thumb and I just can’t feel anything at all. The worst of it is on the knuckle, which will be nasty when it starts healing after the skin opens up. OY. It made me feel so old, having two painful accidents in three days.
The yarn came for Marnie’s Moby sweater today, and I finished Anna’s socks, so one of these evenings I’ll do the swatches. Not tonight — poetry group. Not tomorrow night — Selected Shorts at Symphony Space. Maybe Thursday.
Have a nice evening, y’all.
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. –Eleanor Roosevelt
The title of the post is one of the great lines from the movie Moonstruck, spoken by Nicolas Cage to Cher. (I love that movie so much.) This morning I was running through Google Reader while knitting the second sleeve of my sweater and drinking my morning coffee, and hit this post on the wonderful blog A Femme d’un Certain Age. Obviously, it’s about women like me, written by a woman who is around my age — which I always proudly state. Fifty-two. Yeah!
Anyway, that post I linked has photos of famous women in their 60s+ (and it’s just the most recent; she’s written a couple before this one). So you scroll past and see these older women, all made-up and hairdoed and beweled for the camera, and some have had a little work done, some have had a LOT done, and some have very scary faces, hard and plastic, like masks. The blogger said — and it’s not like I disagree — of course every woman should do what makes her feel best and acknowledged that sometimes things do go awry.
I’m of two minds. Yes, definitely, every woman should do whatever makes her feel best. Of course. And/but every time we completely deny our appearance, we just perpetuate the idea that women shouldn’t age. Every time white hair isn’t ok, every time wrinkles and smile lines aren’t ok, every time the dreaded saggy neck isn’t ok, we keep the story going. Only taut, blemish-free, wrinkle-free women allowed here.
I always suspect that one embarrassing reason I don’t mind saying my age is that people are always shocked, never expecting I’m in my 50s. Maybe if they were shocked because they didn’t know I was only in my 50s I’d feel differently. But as they say, this is what 52 looks like, people! This is what 52 looks like. I know several women in their 50s, and this is what it looks like. It looks soft, it looks alive, it looks relaxed. And every time we go out in the world looking like ourselves, we show younger women what it looks like, and that it’s good.
My 52 has a chunk of white hair in one spot with others showing up all over the place (including in my eyebrows!). My 52 has a deep pair of creases between my eyebrows, from years of frowning while I think hard (yay, I’ve spent a lifetime thinking hard!). My 52 has crinkles around my eyes (yay, lots of smiling!). My 52 has a saggy neck that I struggle to say yay about, that kind of shocks and horrifies me in certain light, but hey. My 52 has a saggy neck. I rub cream into it and let it go out as it is. Nora Ephron said that the throat is the thighs of the head, which totally cracks me up.
So….the title of the post — let me connect the dots for myself because it seemed so clear when I started. Women who want to unwrinkle, degray, well they aren’t monuments to justice! Who says women have to be gray and wrinkled just to reorient others’ ideas of what an aging woman looks like! And I get that, even though I disagree for myself. But one of the real benefits of aging is relaxing, getting it, understanding myself a little better, accepting myself a little more. And it shows in my face.
picture swiped from Marnie's facebook wall, so it's a copy of a copy of a copy. But that's me in Chicago, holding a Bitter Woman Ale and smiling at Marnie and Tom before digging into a giant sandwich. And being 52 the whole time.
“O strengthen me, enlighten me! / I faint in this obscurity, / Thou dewy dawn of memory.” (Ode to Memory, Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Maybe it’s because I’ve been under a lot of stress, or because I don’t get uninterrupted sleep (not to mention not enough sleep), or maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, but my memory is not what it once was. I used to love experiencing my mind working; it was fast, zipping zipping crackling with blue light. I could remember details, texture, nuance, and not only that, it was reliably pretty accurate.
But that was then, and now I just don’t remember — and luckily(?) I also don’t even remember that I don’t remember. It’s not awful, it’s not like I have Alzheimer’s or anything, I’m just forgetful now. Because I hope to age with grace and acceptance, I’ve decided to see this as charming. Isn’t that charming, I have to write everything down. That does just beg the next problem of remembering that (and where) I wrote it down, but you can’t have everything.
my memory bank
I have moleskines stashed everywhere, and going through them can be hilarious. I just thumbed through one, looking for the next clear space, and read this:
“remember the ironing, everything damp & rolled up, stacked in a basket. Huge coke bottle with a metal ‘shower head’ for sprinkling.”
I have no idea. But isn’t that charming? Today I’m grateful for moleskines, and a sense of humor.
getting old is the pits, but it’s better than the alternative!
I’ll set the scene. It’s 9am, I’ve had my scrambled eggs and cups of tea, and I’m at my desk finishing some paperwork before I start working. It’s a beautiful day outside. I’ve been awake since 5am.
Endorsing some checks, I suddenly get up because I have to go to the bathroom. All that tea, you know. I take a step away from my desk and think where was I going? Oh yeah, to the bathroom.
I walk down the hall and think why was I going to the bathroom? I think maybe I’ll remember when I get there.
As I enter the bathroom, I say out loud, Now why was I coming here? Was I going to get something?
And then I laugh out loud at myself. Oh yeah. I had to use the bathroom.
Today I’m so grateful for having a sense of humor about things. Otherwise this would’ve been very disturbing. Happy Friday, y’all!
what? I was gonna wha…oh yeah! That’s right. I was going over there to do that wait why am I here? Why is the refrigerator open, and why are my keys in there?
Well, my attitude is to roll with it. Don’t fight it too hard, don’t waste time griping that this is how it is now, taking it to mean that death is just around the corner. Yes, I’m getting older, and yes, things change in all kinds of ways. Yes, some things are harder (but some things are easier, too!). And sometimes things are just different, now.
My short-term memory has a very weak grip, these days; if I don’t act on something when I’m thinking about it, odds are pretty good that I’ll forget and that’s that. If the thing comes around again, I frequently don’t even know that I’d thought of it before! New world, and all that.
So here’s how it goes in my new associational way of being in the world:
I’m working and realize that my face is feeling tight because the air is so dry. Oh yeah! I was going to put some moisturizer on my face! Walk to the bathroom, as I’m putting it on I remember oh yeah! I was going to refill the humidifier in the living room because the air is so dry….walk to the living room and get the tank, walk to the kitchen to fill it oh yeah! I was going to empty the dishwasher, empty the dishwasher as I put away the mugs I remember oh yeah! I was going to make some mint tea, go to the cabinet to get tea and see oatmeal oh yeah! I was going to have oatmeal for breakfast…..
My life is a series of ‘oh yeah!s’ now. I experience this in a delightful way, a never-ending series of eyebrow-raising, gasp-inducing insights. Ah! Oooh! Oh! Luckily, I always remember that I’d much rather be knitting. If only these manuscripts would edit themselves…..
do i dare to eat a peach?
No one likes to be a stereotype. I can probably state that unequivocally. But let’s talk about me: I don’t like to be such a stereotype, but there you go. I am. I wasn’t as sophisticated as Prufrock, wondering if I dare to eat a peach; when I moved back to Austin TX in 1998, to begin graduate school (I’d lived there from 1964-1971, then 1977-1985), I was one of ‘those’ people, one of the old Austinites. I’m sure they have the local version in your town. Everywhere I went, it was like this:
Over there, that used to be X.
That restaurant? Oh, that used to be Y.
This whole area used to be considered out in the country.
Even I got tired of hearing myself say those things! I couldn’t seem to stop myself, though. Used to be used to be used to be. I guess it’s a hazard of aging.
So I just realized that two of my favorite places on Facebook are Does you ‘member when? Austin, TX version and Young County, Texas History. The Austin link makes me feel kind of pathetic, like I should just get over my aging self. But the Young County history link is amazing! I was born in Young County, which is in north Texas. Some of that history is really fascinating…. from long before I came along, in 1958. For example, recent posts:
L.P. “Uncle Pink” Brooks took the job as second Sheriff of Young County in 1876 when the first Sheriff, Richard Kirk was killed. Since Graham didn’t have a jail at that time, “Uncle Pink” would take the prisoners home. Sheriff Brooks never had a prisoner escape.
”The White Man” was a newspaper published in 1858 at Jacksboro and 1860 at Weatherford, Texas by John R. Baylor and H.A. Hamner. The newspaper led the anti-Indian movement for three years inciting local settlers against all natives, even attacking peaceful Indians. The papers are incredibly scarce, but can be found in the area.
Wild, right? Those stories don’t make me an old fart trying to relive some vague “glory days”…..right?
getting old isn’t for sissies. that’s .. .wait, what was I saying?
When I was a very little girl, I read a lot of serial novels about girls doing exciting things. Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. Loved her. The Boxcar Children, always fun to see what they were up to. And like many little girls I loved Nancy Drew. Nancy and her chums Bess and George, and her boyfriend Ned – ever so much more interesting than dumb Barbie and her boyfriend Ken, and her cousin Scooter. Oh, you didn’t know she had a cousin named Scooter? Yeah, isn’t that dumb? But Nancy, the titian-haired girl detective, always falling into mysteries. I envied her that. I wondered why she couldn’t seem to turn a corner without getting involved in the mysterious, while that NEVER happened to me. Ever. I thought maybe it was because her father Carson was a lawyer. He always had these cases that were tricky, and like all lawyer fathers do, he’d ask his daughter for advice or help. Dang. Why didn’t my dad become a lawyer.
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- i LOVED this book!
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- and this one – remember it well!
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- this one kept me up one night
Well, for anyone else who has had that same woeful experience as a child, let me tell you that your chance will come. My life is now constantly full of mysteries. “Where did this paper tape come from, I have two rolls in the medicine cabinet! I didn’t buy them?” “No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.” OR “Didn’t we just have a whole bag of chips? What happened to them, I didn’t eat them.” “Neither did I, I have no idea what happened to them. I remember buying them.” And the mystery that keeps repeating itself: “Where are my glasses? I just had them.” And its cousin, “Where are my keys, have you seen them?” And the always popular “Now why did I come into this room?”
Paging Nancy Drew.
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