Getting older

[Night Elf]

I'm 46 yrs. old. I hate to say it, but I'm middle aged. That means my body is starting to age. I get that. But it's not cool. My hands are wrinkled. My dd likes to play with the veins that are bulging out. She says my hands look fine. She thinks of me as "older" though. And now I noticed my thumb nails have ridges. I looked it up and found that nails show age and the ridges can be considered wrinkles for the nails. Isn't that weird? I can live with my silvery gray hair. I don't know when it will turn gray completely but I like the color. But I don't like my hands looking like an older person's hands.

[Alessandra]

Personally, I love 'old' hands. My mother's hands were tanned, a bit arthritic, definitely used. To me they represented hands that could lift heavy cast iron pans and that had cooked many meals, hands that had gardened and repaired lamps, hands that were skilled at sewing…. When I lived in NYC, I would look at people's hands when I sat on the subway. So many twenty-something young women had flabby hands, hands that looked as though they had never done anything useful or artistic. Just unused.   Can you think of your hands as a badge of what you have accomplished and are capable of?

[kewb]

I am 47 and my hands and my neck are my two least favorite to look at parts of my body.  I remember my mother telling me as a child they are the areas that show your age first, which is why so many old ladies wear turtle necks.

[Guest]

I'm 42 and I'm starting to be bothered by my hands and sometimes my neck. 

 

I color my hair, so no worries there, but my hands surely give away my age. I have ridges on my nails, too. 

[Miss Tick]

"Oh no, Mom, you're not fat! Your belly button is just - deeper."

 

Great.

[Anne]

I am ten years older than you are. 

 

My approach to aging is to be as physically active as I can be - when I am active (no matter how pathetic the level), I feel confident and strong, which makes the other aging issues easier to deal with.

 

I am also trying to stay mentally active - this also makes me feel more confident of my ability to handle whatever is coming next.

 

Getting older is not for sissys!!

 

Anne

[HRAAB]

I hear you about the hands. I think it was the first thing I noticed - how my hands have aged. I've wondered about the nail ridges as I've got a couple of nails with very defined ridges. Nail wrinkles, hmmmm. I don't know what to do about that. After the hands, it was my neck. I look at it in the mirror and think it must belong to someone else, definitely not me.

 

The interesting part though is I 'feel' better about myself than I ever have. I'm confident, don't worry (too much anyway) about what others think, feel good about who I am. I'm 53, and I feel really good about myself - not the wrinkles and all - but on the inside. It seems cruel that when I figure that all out the body begins to go.

[Joyofsixreboot]

I understand the hands. I can exercise the body, die the hair and wear scarves bit I don't think wearing gloves will be making a come back. Oh, I'll be 51 Saturday. The hands look 102.

[Guest]

I remember the first time I saw my grandmother's hands at the end of my mother's arms. Now they are at the end of my own arms.

 

I did not age the way I expected at all. I envisioned snow white hair with a rebellious streak of manic panic, a full set of teeth, and an unexpectedly young looking face. This is not what I look like.

 

On my face, my coal black hair looks fake. When I say I don't dye it, people assume that I am stupid as well as a liar. Part of me wishes I could get a hairdresser to give me the grey that nature didn't because this is not who I am, this is not who I am....

 

I cringe when I first see the pictures Soldier Boy takes of me because that old woman is not "well preserved", that old woman is not "inspirational", that old woman is not "rocking midlife", that old woman does not resemble Maud, either Bea Arthur's version or Harold's girlfriend, and I was so looking forward to being what I thought an "outrageous older woman" is supposed to look like that it feels like losing something I never had.

 

But then when I look again and see her through my son's eyes, I realize that he is trying to capture the beauty that he sees, which is not tainted by preconceptions or stereotypes of what older women are "supposed" to look like any more than your daughter's love of your hands is.

 

And I am beautiful. So are you. I used to love my grandmother's hands when they were at the ends of my grandmother's arms and I took the same kind of joy at finding them on the ends of my mother's arms as I took in finding my children moving on to new stages of life.

 

I'm old enough to say "fiftysomething" now and not to get insulted for being mistaken for "sixtysomething" instead of hearing "But you don't look a day over forty!".

 

If I could afford to buy that full set of teeth I once thought was my birthright, I'd have trouble living with myself for not spending that kind of money on a down payment for a house or a piece of land or investing in solar energy or at least donating it to a charity that could use it to buy food that could save the lives of several third world children my littlest son's age.

[curlgirl]

Looking down at a picture your child is drawing of you and seeing the prominence of the "parentheses" lines around your mouth..... I think that is what you call them. Anyway I had convinced myself they weren't that noticeable.....

[Night Elf]

Personally, I love 'old' hands. My mother's hands were tanned, a bit arthritic, definitely used. To me they represented hands that could lift heavy cast iron pans and that had cooked many meals, hands that had gardened and repaired lamps, hands that were skilled at sewing…. When I lived in NYC, I would look at people's hands when I sat on the subway. So many twenty-something young women had flabby hands, hands that looked as though they had never done anything useful or artistic. Just unused.   Can you think of your hands as a badge of what you have accomplished and are capable of?

 

This is lovely, thank you. Yes, my hands have cared for my family and I'm quite proud of that.

[Danestress]

Since billion of advertising dollars are being spent to make us think otherwise, I will be honest and say that yes, my hands are beginning to decay, and no, there is nothing that can be done to really change that.  Sure, sunscreen helps - lots of things help "preserve" us into older age.  But if your idea of beauty is fresh, unwrinkled skin without liver spots, then we are all going to go down hill.

 

That which is loved is beautiful.  But if you have conventional ideas of beauty, then 85 just isn't all that great looking in an objective way.   People will write eloquently about how beautiful their grandmothers are, and that's really nice.  Mine was a world class beauty. But she wasn't as beautiful in a worldly way at 85 as she was at 30.  No one is.  And nothing will change that.   You either die, or you get all saggy and wrinkled.  The end. 

[mytwomonkeys]

42 here. My neck is aging. Hate.it.so.much.