Not Acting My Age
During the many Club Med vacations my parents took in the mid-1970s, when my sister and I were tweens, we were shipped off to Miami Beach to be minded by our grandparents. Inevitably, my grandfather’s sister, great-aunt Ruth, would visit. Ruth always came with a giant purse - a satchel, really - from which she’d fish out butterscotch candies covered in lint and whatnot, offering them to us in exchange for kisses. On the face of it, this was a complicated ask, because on the face of Ruth were at least six black moles the size and texture of raisins, the largest and most terrifying, hovering just over her top lip. I was so panicked those moles were contagious that I always cited shyness or a bellyache, declining both kiss and candy. My sister, having no such fear, always ended up with both sweets. To this day, my sister has no moles but, as they say, life is long.
Aunt Ruth’s routine was to pat the sofa spaces next to her prodigious behind so that we should sit beside her as she and my grandparents chatted. Slyly, we’d side-eye the frightful sight of Ruth’s legs, a veritable New York City subway map of varicose veins. Her arms, tanned beyond human recognition, looked as if the skin might just slide right off, like the casing of a hard salami.
While swigging her Scotch neat and chain-smoking her Benson & Hedges, Ruth regaled us with her health woes: diabetes, chronic bronchitis, and night blindness…to name just a few.
To us, then and now, Ruth was an aged woman as old as we could possibly imagine someone being. Someone whose health issues, looks and concerns seemed as remote and faraway as whatever Club Med held our parents.
Ruth was 60. The age I have just turned. Big sigh. I don’t know how this happened.
I know what you’re going to say: Ruth was from a generation that touted the health benefits of smoking and midday cocktails. In her era, calisthenics were more of a dance craze than a lifestyle. Well, to quote Bread, it don’t matter to me. And if you don’t know Bread, that’s because you’re not 60.
I can’t be sixty. I won’t be sixty. It’s not possible. In my head, I feel 24. I can still clearly see that 24-year-old me, running though New York City streets in the rain, tee shirt soaked through, unfazed by wet hair and soggy shoes. Not just undaunted: energized. It would be decades before I’d consider that rain runoff from Manhattan rooftops was a toxic stew of pigeon poop, scaffolding rust and sewage but back then it was only exhilarating. The tee shirt was white and see-through and that braless 24 year-old girl didn’t care because her breasts were still high and tight. It felt good be ogled by passers-by pedestrian enough to own umbrellas and bras. Their judgment fueled me, assured me I was living my life differently, more wildly, with maximum joy, little responsibility and zero worry.
These days I fight against worrying all the time about everything. Carefree is now only a gum I once chewed, before I got TMJ. And those breasts? Well, that’s a very sad story for another day. Now the only ogling I get is from my very serious dermatologist, who studiously presses a magnifier to all my brown spots during my annual exam, looking for danger signs. The sunburn from my Capetown, South African foray up Table Mountain with a man I met a day before and pledged to move in with two days later? Scars from accidents of carelessness, tempting fate, from just not considering/worrying/overanalyzing? I think of these scars and marks as badges of honor. A jumping off point to tell a story of a great adventure. But my very serious dermatologist cares nothing for any of my stories. Risk has no cachet in her business. My skin tells her a much more sobering story. A story of a 60-year-old impudent, careless woman. Worse, a woman with a family history of moles.
To her, I am Aunt Ruth. My skin belies years of living hard and large, who dared not to care about SPF or hats, who survived a life without seat belts, bike helmets, or fentanyl testing strips. Who played on railroad tracks with my parents’ approval, drank vats of red dye #2, ate Twinkies and a steady diet of never-perishable foods, and tanned using a mirrored reflector doused head to toe in baby oil. I tell my dermatologist none of this. I don’t think she is the audience for my exploits. After her exhaustive inspection of me, my very serious doctor delivers her prognosis with a single line: “Nothing remarkable.”
Well, doc, I beg to differ: I am remarkable. Even at this age and despite the skin I’m in. I’ve long given up the baby oil but still hanging on to the bikini. I’m going to continue to say yes to dancing on tables, to too many dirty martinis, dangerously high heels, and that occasional Marlboro Light. Though I am older than many Supreme Court Justices, and the door has likely closed on my opportunity to medal in Olympic ice dancing, I am not succumbing to this number.
So if you see me running in the rain, just let me. I’ll try and be careful but I don’t want to be fearful. Turns out, you miss out on a lot of candy that way.
