Bear With Me

Bear with me. I want to tell you something about being old. Yup, I am officially described, tagged, as OLD. 78, soon to be 79. My hair is white (although I did decide to put that purple streak in, because I didn’t want to be “another white-haired lady in Florida;” but I are a white-haired lady in Florida, even with the damned streak).

My body is suddenly wider in the middle. Why does all the fat settle there, around the middle?  I could use a little in my ass and my tits, but no. No matter how much I exercise and try to will that tire away, it sticks there, resists any attempt to deflate it. There are flat tires on my bike, sometimes on my car. Why can’t my middle become a flat tire?

My skin, I am told by my friendly dermatologist, is very thin, fragile. If I bump into something, that tissue paper epidermis often just tears open… it’s disgusting. And then there are those special places on my body where the skin is like crepe paper. That is an apt description. Crepe paper. And guess what? Crepe Erase does not work. I am loathed to admit that I fell for that crap commercial on the web, and then I spent time (a valuable commodity at my, you know, age) rubbing it in. They wanted me to keep replacing it month after month, but I finally found the way to stop it. I think it involved my crying into the phone to a person from another country.

But, I want to tell you that besides all that, besides the fact that the reflection in my bathroom mirror is my mother, I do not truly believe, fully compute, that I am, as they say, “OLD.” All the evidence is there; but despite it all, my interior image, myself’s self is not old.  I am me.

I am me. The same me I was 10, 20, 30, 50 years ago. Hopefully a little wiser, but probably not that much. Same fears, same anxieties; same need to love, to hug, to laugh, to see others laugh.  The me so familiar to me that I cannot understand why those others around me can’t see it. I keep peeking out of myself to see it there is any sign of recognition in the crowd. There isn’t.

And here’s the sad reason why. Are you ready for this? At that certain age you can just stop worrying about your looks because you become… invisible. In-vis-i-ble.  Took me a while to figure it out, but I am pretty certain about this observation. Sing it with me now:

“I’m Mrs. Cellophane, that’s my name. Mrs. Cellophane. Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me and never know I'm there.”

They sang it in “Chicago,” but it is true most anywhere. That is a little sad but also a lot liberating. So I continue to be me. I just have to be careful walking through the parking lot to the Publix Food Market.  Maybe I should wear a bell around my neck, so they can hear me, even if they don’t see me.