I'm Too Young To Be A Woman This Old

Newest fashion or just an old lady? Earplugs

2011-08-28T08:02:00.000-07:00

I carry earplugs with me. At all times. I'm not alone. A commenter noted that the music at 24 Hour Fitness is deafening. Is it that way everywhere? At LA Fitness? Total Woman? Your gym? I thought it was just in the turbo kickboxing classes I took, where most of the participants are half my age. Then I noticed it in yoga at the gym. And in Body Pump classes. To top it off, the instructor wears a microphone. Are you getting a feel for this?

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE my gym classes; the instructors are great. But the noise from music with a highly percussive beat and what sounds at times like alarms going off actually hurts--feels like glass cracking inside my ears at highest decibel. Like static turned up too high. What I don't understand is how so many people don't wear earplugs in aerobics. I don't get it. Even with my ears plugged up, the music was as loud as a nightclub, but muted just enough so I felt no pain. And let me be clear--I like the music.

Recently I started going to Zumba. (It's great--right?!) But the noise level - oy. Aiy. Sigh. The volume is comparable to a Romantics concert in the 1980s (ever go?).

"How do you stand it?" they seemingly ask, but I don't always know for sure. Though I can guess, as they are wincing and pointing to their tender eardrums. Rolling their eyes when the instructor turns up the music even louder.

But when they talk to me I can't hear them. I just point to my ears, to the little blue plugs, and smile.

As the music just keeps getting louder and louder.

PS: I opt for these: Highest Blocking Moldable Ear Plugs.

Bifocal contacts & me: a love story

2009-05-02T09:01:00.001-07:00

I can't believe this. I got bifocal contacts. And I love them. My optometrist suggested them. He is young and fresh faced, and very concerned that I see correctly. His name is Dr. Brown, in Irvine. I have somewhat complicated eyes (one drifts, kinda, I'm very nearsighted and my reading vision is pretty good, but I read a lot and my left eye starts to focus elsewhere and reading glasses are not my cup of tea [though I do have 5 pairs that I never wear; was searching for the perfect one]. Phew.)
Well, I tried these contacts and absolutely fell in love. No, not with Dr. Brown (though I do recommend him for getting a good glasses prescription!).
The point of all this is I'm too young to fall in love with bifocal contacts. Or multifocal contacts. Or whatever you call them. I'm too young to say I'm so happy I have them.
But I am happy to have them.
-m

Suddenly Hot - The, ahem, mature consumer? You betcha!

2009-04-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

Once ignored in the marketplace, the real grown-up has finally come into his (or her) own. Yay!
Read about it in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/business/20adcol.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

We bought a blood pressure cuff thing

2008-11-10T08:13:00.001-08:00

We have bought a blood pressure cuff, one of those automatic, digital read-out devices. My husband and I take our blood pressure in all rooms of the house; reclining, sitting, half-reclining. Maybe a little compulsively. It has become somewhat addictive; we keep doing it until we get a number we like. Mine runs lower, his higher. I am too young to be doing this. I am reminded myself of my mother, who used to do this with her blood-sugar monitoring. "I've test myself until I get a number I can live with," she used to say.
You're crazy, I'd think. It's not a party toy.
But now I think, you know, it's kind of fun, especially when you hit the jackpot.
When she got a number she could live with she went out and had a milkshake. Or a Milky Way. When we get a number we can live with we take our BP again to make sure it was accurate. I think my mother might have been more fun to hang out with--or maybe not?

PS: It's been 2 months--I'm still not in the know about Facebook. But I am learning about My Space.

Facebook ignorant--completely

2008-09-15T19:30:00.001-07:00

How can it be that I don't know what Facebook is?

I'm going to find out!

The music is too loud

2008-08-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd wear earplugs to TKB (turbo kickboxing at 24 hour fitness).
I never could have predicted I'd hate the music the play at the MAC counter, much less think any kind of music was too loud.
I never imagined being bothered by the bass in another person's car radio--when I was younger I didn't find that body-shaking effect troublesome in the least.
I never fathomed I wouldn't be able to understand the words to songs. Understanding the words to songs not to mention memorizing them was always my specialty.
I never saw myself as someone who someday would be concerned about loud music, streaming through an iPod, might damage one's hearing permanently; now I think it whenever I can dissect some of the words (still can't understand all of them) in someone younger person's iPod.
I never guessed I'd turn the volume up to hear the news, but turn it down when a song came on.

But maybe someday I'll be an old lady who turns up the volume so loud on her television set that the walls shake and kids who use iPods won't be able to hear the words I don't understand.

Then we'll see who thinks the music is too loud.

Could it be 20 years ago today?

2008-08-12T09:51:00.001-07:00

I just packed up 2 books to send to a former employer. Not as a gift but as a return. I found them on my bookshelves, 2 little ones by Thomas Hora, no bigger than pocket calendars. They were from the Spiritual Care Department of St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, CA. I’d worked there as an LCSW and someone from the then Pastoral Care Department (note the department’s name evolution) gave them to me to help me enlighten myself.

I’d held onto them, I’ll admit, because I liked their simplicity. The Soundless Music of Life and A Hierarchy of Values. Back when the books were loaned to me I was too young to really understand their message. Now I understand more—the whole issue of spirituality is definitely mainstream these days. But not then. Which is why, I suppose, I felt that having them on my bookshelf brought me one step closer to knowing what the soundless music was all about, and what a hierarchy of values really meant.

Time helped with that, too. And life. But what I realized, in addressing the envelope, in listening to the person on the other end of the line tell me warmly, “You’re feeling guilty!” that what is most poignant for me is that I’m too young for this—or so I thought. Those books came into my home 20 years ago. I was single then, living in a studio, and then with roommates. Since then I’ve changed careers, gotten married, adopted two children, added dogs to your family, bought a home, had five cars…the list goes on. Twenty years ago.

It just still feels like I’m too young to be a woman this old.

Overthinking [aka: obsessing, mulling, etc...] it (whatever it is) my entire life

2008-08-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

At the age of 47 I realized that which I thought was my hallmark asset--my ability to think--turns out to be quite a liability. I've been thinking for so many years that it's become a disease for me (Louise Hay would say "dis-ease"--and I thank her for that).

I grew up with the idea that you had to use your brain, your mind, your intellect. I grew up with the idea that I didn't do that enough. Think. So I did it more. Like if a little is good, more is better.

It isn't.

Not when you can't make a decision that should be relatively easy--like what flavor Gatorade to buy at 7-11. And not when you send a decision to your brain that really belongs to your heart or gut (most of them, if not all, do).

Today I'm going to trust that.

Erin, my office mate

2008-05-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

My office mate, Erin, was born July 12, 1978.
I was born May 15, 1961.

I thought I was too young to be so much older.

How to live like a dog and be quite happy

2008-05-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

"My dog is usually pleased with what I do, because she is not infected with the concept of what I should be doing."
Lonzo Idolswine
found on a sticky pad in the home of my husband's Aunt Linda

The footprints and fingerprints of my life

2008-05-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

Just like I can’t control what other people do, sometimes I can’t control which direction my life is headed. I know I'm getting older but sometimes I feel so powerless, no--impotent (hate that word. My words and thoughts have their own footprints and fingerprints--so does my life--and I need to remember that. I can remind myself when I forget that the story of my life--my arc, my words, my themes are already there, waiting for me to listen, to receive them and live. I can add new ones, too, or look at the old ones in a new way.

It's how the best stories emerge, quite organically--right? Why can't the best lives be the same?

Advice that can't fail [for women at every, any age]

2008-05-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

"Keep following the thread where instinct takes you. Force yourself to wait things out."

Ira Glass
This American Life

The flow of me

2008-05-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

I think Natalie Goldberg http://www.nataliegoldberg.com/ has the best things ever to say about writing. She teaches that, when in writing practice, the predominant goal is to keep the pen in your hand moving to allow the words, images, fragments and impulses to pour from the unconscious onto the page. From this I've understood that flow, like the unconscious, is--thankfully, gratefully--a constant.

But flow not only about writing, is also about life. My life. It's my calling, my work, my joy to harvest that which sleeps in me. When I write I think of these discoveries as unconscious gems; the same goes for that which I learn about me.

When I open myself up to flow, I write better. I live better. I am better--a better me, the authentic me. The real deal. A not-so-good habit of mine, which I've written about on my writing blog http:www.blogger.fullread.com is to step out of flow and try to write a certain way. It never works. The piece feels forced and then I want to avoid my creation for days (avoidance is not the same as letting the creation "breathe").

I need to re-find myself, rediscover me. I can only find it when I stop looking. And that's what flow is. The path that leads back to myself, to the deepness in me, to the well of energy that is waiting to catch me, longing for me to once again connect, reconnect.

I believe Natalie Goldberg would understand.

Find your voice and listen to it

2008-05-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

Don't be afraid to write what is inside yourself. What life is not about: constructing a perfect day from the outside, trying to make all the pieces fit a certain way. Perfect is what's inside, though sometimes it's hidden so deep because it's been ignored, neglected, shunned by none other than the owner.

Find your voice and listen to it. What does it say? You might be surprised. I know I was when I finally listened to my own.

More on that tomorrow.

Namaste

2008-05-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

One of my yoga teachers, John Childers, reminds students that "The oak tree is in the acorn." I love this. For me, as a woman, this means that the story of me already exists inside me. It's my job to recognize the real me--the authentic me--and cultivate her, nourish her. It's my responsibility to shepherd her through the process of life, and, like parents raising a child, to respect my individuality, and encourage my uniqueness, and know, that I'm enough because that's all there is; that you're enough because that's all there is.

Namaste.

Today is my Birthday

2008-05-15T20:32:00.001-07:00

Today is my birthday. I turned 47. I don't feel like what I imagined 47 to be--slow, tired. I also don't feel like I'm old enough inside to be this, well, old. Like I'm too young to be a woman this old. I just wish there were other words to substitute for "young" and "old." I am going to find them and get back to you. If they don't exist I will make them up.

More to come on that.

Happy Birthday!

No longer scared

2008-05-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

I’m old enough to admit it now. I didn’t fantasize about a real baby I could love. Or dream of pregnancy the way some girls do. I never stuck a pillow beneath my dress to pretend I was having a baby. I watched my playmates do those things, and shrivel up my nose. When I told them why, they shriveled their noses, and I thought there was something wrong with me.

I played with dolls but as far as I was concerned they were always someone else’s babies. They lived in my house, slept in the toy crib that stood beside my own bed. When I played house, I didn’t want to be the mother; I wanted to be the daughter, or the puppy dog with a jingly nametag curled up in people’s laps. I liked my dolls and pushed my doll up and down the playground in a two toned blue metal carriage, a miniature replica of the ones the Manhattan housewives steered along the winding tree lined paths of Central Park. I held cookies to my doll’s rosy lips, bathed her in the tub, pretended to feed her from my dinner plate.

That didn’t mean I didn’t try to be one of those women, or try to have a baby. I’m grown up enough to be a woman who, at middle age I can finally admit I imagined myself the perfect babysitter, but never dreamed in the deepest way—the way that other women do—of having a real baby I could love.

There, I said it. The truth is out.

The truth feels good, mostly because I'm finally hearing myself speak it, reading my own words, holding it as something valuable and authentic.

Doubt

2008-05-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

Doubting myself is not charming or demure; it does not serve me. I wish I understood this when I was younger. I'm not to old to learn it now.

What we show other people; what does it say about us? What we notice, does that say something, too?

2008-05-12T21:09:00.001-07:00

Spotted at Fashion Island, Newport Beach, CA, a high-end shopping center:
1. eight-year old cheerleading troupe in full regalia, outfits likely $300 a piece, made up with thick eyeliner and teased hair like junior beauty queens, drinking Haagen Daz milkshakes, ignoring their mothers
2. a stream of dogs from dachshunds to labs dressed up to have their Christmas portraits taken in the back room of Muttropolis, a gourmet pet boutique
3. no fewer than 5 collagen lip enhancements (within 5 minutes) of sitting down to lunch at PF Changs
4. sweaters for votive candles, to make them sexier
5. a one-karat chocolate diamond; a ten-karat emerald, an older man with hair growing out of his ears and a younger woman with breast implants (Natrelle, probably) window shopping
6. a middle-aged man with greyed temples in Bermuda shorts and loafers with no socks carrying shopping bags from Forever 21 behind his teenage daughter and her friend who ignored him
7. an old couple holding wrinkled, liver-spotted hands by the coy pond

Mother's Day revisited

2008-05-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

I think I finally understand Mother's Day.

I realized, recently, that as a kid I had no idea that my mom might love me, but want nothing more than time to herself. As the little girl who hand embroidered a yellow cotton pillowcase in first grade (with sewn on buttons that formed the tip of butterfly antennas) to give her (I have it now; it is truly precious and will soon be framed to hang in my office), all I could think of was how much I loved her and how I wanted to be with her, right next to her the whole entire day. Wouldn't that be a gift!

But today, because my daughters, 19 and 22, are working the entire day, and for reasons too numerous to list (some big some small) I won't be seeing them today. However, I got the sweetest, loveliest phone call this morning, early, to wish me a happy Mother's Day.

I have had great Mother's Days with my daughters; just having them here from Russia was a gift (we adopted them nine years ago when they were already a teen and 'tween). But today was a different kind of gift; a different kind of beauty. The gift being that they were living their lives and I was living mine--and that it was OK to be apart. That it showed one can be a mother, and celebrate Mother's Day doing her art, or writing, doing a little shopping, going to TKB at 24 H Fitness and going out to dinner with her beloved. That's my Mother's Day today and at 46, I'm digging it.

I bet my mother would've dug that kind of Mother's Day, too. Not the TKB, but the being able to do what she wanted alone. I know, I know, that's not why you become a mom. But in becoming a mom you do realize how important that solitary time is, and how it makes you a better mom for the long haul.

No longer regretting things I thought were dumb that I'd done

2008-05-10T22:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have to do something I regret--meaning, something that makes me feel sick inside, like I've hurt my insides in a profound way. Sometimes I have to do that something more than once to realize I need to practice a new behavior. Being open to the learning is, to me, an important step to honoring myself.

Finally I can accept that my mis-steps or mis-takes are part of my growth. When I was younger I used to be so ashamed of all the things I'd done that didn't work. Now I no longer regret. This tells me I'm older (in a good way) that I might feel. And this kind of older is a good thing.

Lab rats for beauty

2008-05-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

I freelance for an ad agency that offers products committed to reversing the aging process. It's a weird place to work. Many of the ads and brochures are written by men. Sometimes they have photo shoots where volunteers can get injected with toxins and fillers and all they have to do is pose for before and after pictures.

I received an email asking for volunteers for above-said photo shoot. I know a gazillion women get injected with those things all the time but after reading what might go wrong I'll just steer clear--free or not. If the effects of a drug injection in your eyebrow area lasts for four months, but three of those four months you spend with a droopy eyelid (because droopy eyelids are side effects--it's truth)--is it worth it?

Apparently it is to a lot of people, several of them my friends (much to my surprise and chagrin). When I mentioned that there had been a call for "models" (lab rats) and that I'd dumped the email, they were dismayed.

"I wouldn't done it," one friend said.

"The next time you get one of those emails, call me first and don't tell anyone else," said another.

"I am so mad at you," another girlfriend said. "You should know me better than to think I wouldn't try something like that."

I thought she would've been insulted had I asked.

"I'm insulted you didn't," she said.

"But is it worth a droopy eyelid?" I asked.

She thought about it.

"If it makes you look younger," she said, "anything's worth it."

Turns out I didn't know her that well at all.

A new kind of mom liberation

2008-05-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

I got off the phone with a friend who has been having problems with her 19-year old and I did something I've been practicing: I kept my mouth shut. (Yay!) I used to always feel the urge to give advice; somehow didn't that mean I could be in control. I hate even writing that, but actually, that's what it meant.

When we were having "issues" with our kids, nothing anyone said except "I understand" helped. Or "I've been there" or "I know." Nothing. Problem was people liked to give advice. All the advice was about how all we needed to do was to control and "make" these young adults do things they should coupled with how we should intervene so they didn't have to feel the natural consequences of the choices they'd made.

It was confusing and exhausting.

Then I met Carolanne. She said something different, and better: "I can relate to everything you just said." She doesn't offer suggestions right then (unless I ask), but just the fact that she gets it is totally enough. When she doesn't get it she simply says, "I don't have experience with that, but I can relate to something being so hard to experience--I can relate to all of that."

I also met Marla. She said, "That must be so hard," and she did it with just the right amount of compassion that it didn't feel like pity. At all. She explained to me that kids have their own brains, make their own choices. My job was to focus in on me, and how to take care of myself so my love for my no-longer minor kids (who were making choices I didn't necessarily like, though I loved them) didn't get diluted by my anxiety, worry, fear, pressure, judgments, which trick me into thinking I actually have control over them when I don't. Never did.

Doesn't every mom go through this? Be honest. When I was younger I'd never admit any of this to anyone. I'm paraphrasing Marla's words, of course, but the essence is all there. Acceptance--acceptance of me and where I'm at, even if I'm not where she is at yet.

So I found myself thinking that the only problem this mom-friend really had was that she was holding on. "I just need to find the right thing to say," she kept saying. "Then maybe she'd listen to me." She was still trying to teach her daughter how to grow up. In order for her daughter to grow, it seemed, she needed to let it go.

But I just listened. Because, just like that mom would never find the perfect choice of words to liberate her daughter, I would never find them to liberate my friend. It comes from the inside first. I hope she looks there. It sure helped me.

Aging Gracefully--A Memoir

2008-05-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

Reeve Lindbergh, the youngest child of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, just published a memoir called, Forward From Here; Leaving Middle Age and Other Unexpected Adventures. In a review in the Washington Post online, Judith Viorst writes: "The good news is that she no longer thinks of herself as a work in progress, as an interminable self-improvement project. The bad news includes the familiar complaints about sagging skin, misplaced glasses and creaky bones, but she also speaks of the heavier stuff: her surgery for a brain tumor, meticulously recorded in her diary; her "ongoing very real sadness" at the absence of family members and friends now dead; and, in a chapter called "Ashes," her somewhat irreverent examination of what to do with a loved one's cremated remains." [read entire review by clicking http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/03/AR2008040303322.html ]

I like that part she talks about--no longer being a work in progress. I take this to mean she feels solid in her Self-ness. This is something I struggle with, still, at middle age, though as I look back to my life as a younger woman, I see how I've grown and, from there, become more secure with me.

There is something so comforting about knowing it can get even better, and that some of it is, well, just because we are getting older, not in trying to pretend we're not.

My mother

2008-05-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

I was born in 1961, the year my mother turned 42. Forty-two was considered old back then to become pregnant, and she drew curious stares from neighbors in our Yonkers, New York apartment building, as they watched her belly grow.

Today I'm 46, about to turn 47, which makes me five years older than my mother was when she had me. Forty-seven is, well, young. At the very least it's on the young side of middle age.

But she seemed so old, so ancient, so on the way out. I recently wrote about that here.

One thing I know for sure is that she wasn't old then, just like I'm not old today.

I never thought the day would come where I'd evaluate my mother and myself as similar. If she were still around she might not agree, but I'd tell her, yes, it's true.

Curly, gray, straight, permed, colored: who are you today?

2008-05-05T17:13:00.000-07:00

I met a younger woman (girl--she's about 26) in the break room. She asked if my hair was naturally curly and I told her yes.

"Love the spirals," she said. "I got perms for years [years?] to look like that."

"I love your hair," she said. "I just see myself as more of a curly-haired type of person."

Her hair was dark, thick and straight, parted on the side with a few blondish highlights, nothing too contrasty. Very nice.

"But your hair is so pretty," I said, and realized it was how she saw herself that mattered, that curly hair to her was a state of mind. Maybe it was funner or sexier, or silly. Maybe it made her--in her eyes--the life of the party and gave her confidence. Mojo-ette. Who knows?

After we parted ways I touched my graying part. Maybe gray hair is a state of mind, too. Maybe someday it will be the state I live in. But right now--in my mind--it is not a state I'd choose to inhabit. I'd like to change that so someday I'll want to live there. I think someday it will be inevitable, so why not try to give it a new meaning for myself. Plenty of women are on campaigns to get society to accept grayness, but what's wrong with starting, first, with yourself?

Younger sister by 21 years

2008-05-04T18:19:00.001-07:00

My mother was almost 42 when I was born in 1961, with my father about to turn 44. Today that seems kind of young, but not then. I knew my father always with gray hair, a bad back, and perpetual cancer that warranted lengthy hospital stays, and my mother with wrinkled skin, few teeth save for her silver bridges, and leg cramps that still left her toes curled like fists. My sister was twenty-one years older than me, my brother eighteen years my senior when I was born. Both looked more like my parents should have looked: younger. Kids pointed to my mother and said, “That lady looks like she should be your grandmother.”

Then “Grandmother” missed her period.

She always told me like this: “I missed my period, so I knew. I knew alright.”

I got used to that. It was the way my mother told my story. I got used to the idea that my parents would die sooner than most. They are both gone now.

But what I never much thought of was my siblings getting older That they would age, quicker than me. My sister will turn 68 this year; my brother 65: now both will be on Medicare.

I don't know why this has hit me more tenderly than even my parents being older, but it has.

More soon.

Another hair post

2008-05-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

My hair grows faster than it did when I was a kid but so does my gray hair. A bit ironic, don't you think?

Old school

2008-05-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

One of the editors at a high-tech ad agency, a young uber-cool, mildly disgruntled-as-a-way-of-expressing-ennui male (about age 28) told me I was old school when I used the paper dictionary instead of the online version to look up a word.
"My mom does that," he said.
"I usually use the online version," I told him.
He stared at me, as if to say, you actually have to look things up?
"I keep a dictionary in my car," I said, and named off the other places I stored them: kitchen, dining room, office (of course) bedroom, dining room, and, ahem, powder room.
More stares.
"That is definitely old school," he said.
"I've been doing it since I was 20," I said, and explained that when I read books with words I didn't understand I could look them up. In the car, when I didn't understand a word on the radio, I'd do the same. "I had a professor with amazing vocabulary and he told us that's what he did."
More stares. Total disbelief.
"But you still do it," the young editor said as he walked away. "You need to adapt."
Whatever.

Having to remember not to forget

2008-05-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

I entered myself in a challenge via another website. I must have had a moment of insanity. The challenge being to post on each of my 4 blogs every day throughout the month of May. I know, I'm crazy enough to have 4 blogs. But, you know, I have diverse interests.

In any case I just received an email from a fellow challenger, writer Michelle Rafter, asking how I manage to keep 4 blogs (balls) in the air. Thing is, I'm old enough to know better than to have embarked on such a ridiculous pursuit, but then again, I'll just act like it proves I know I have the stamina of a much younger person (yes! that's it). The good news is, in my mid-40s-I'm old enough to have more than enough material (life experience) to fill (albeit, imperfectly) a daily blog or 2 (or 3 or 4).

Now let's see what shows up.

Hair

2008-04-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hair
I have curly hair. A colleague once said:
My father’s hair was a thick mat of black waves with a couple of tiny spirals at the neck, like the springs in ball point pens. When the wind blew, his hair migrated across his head in one piece, like a toupee.
My hair, which falls beneath my shoulders but is much longer if you pull the bottom with the tips of your fingers, comes to the middle of my chest, rather, my breasts. Which is significant for me. It’s the meaning, the femininity that my hair represents, something it speaks for me when I think I can’t. it touches me at the center of my breast, my heart, my being.
People tell me they like my hair. Some people come toward me with open hands and grab fistfuls without asking. They shake their head like it’s a phenomenon, this hair of mine.
“Hey, Meredith, where’d those curls come from?” people say.
“My father.”
“Is he a hairdresser?”
When I was a kid these same types called me Mop. Broom. Curly, Frizz. Kinks. Wavy. Shirley Temple. Afro girl.
It’s funny, what hair means to people. It means something to me, too. It reminds me of the times when my mother took me to get it cut, then having its length chopped into a skullcap. It seems in my family, I’m encouraged to cut my hair. To contain the hair. Control the hair. The sexuality. Femininity. Like someone else’s hair says something about me, or mine, them—or rather, their reaction to it (and mine to theirs).
I admit I hated the curls for the first twenty-something years of my life. But well into my third decade, I’ve grown to love the tresses that for years made me cry, swear and curse my father’s side of the family. Kinky brunette hair was one hundred percent Lipsheez.
A gross part of my net pay goes to pay for hair care. There’s a beauty supply annex in my bathroom to prove it. Every week the recycle truck schleps another crate full of my plastic empties away, their hollow insides milked for every last drop of style and control. Which means I have to buy more.
My naturally curly borderline kinky hair demands it.
I couldn’t always afford it. My modest paychecks would barely cover rent and a frozen pizza. So I was forced into slicking my ever-so-oppositional tresses with the generic, buy-one-get-five-free drugstore brand gels. These episodes in frugality never failed to make my hair crunch like curly fries, or, worse, flake like dandruff. Back then I lived off tiny sample packets and bought products in the smallest (least economical, of course) sizes. Sometimes a very nice beauty supply clerk who picked up on my desperation and frowsy, bad hair vibes would offer to fill one of own containers with what she could squeeze out of the salon’s tester bottles. To these women, I will forever be indebted, and so will my pocketbook.
Now thanks to the benefits of dual income living, I have a special category in my budget labeled “HAIR.” And it’s a good thing. My husband is bald; I make up for it. Everyone thinks my naturally curly hair is a simple five-minute wash and wear affair. All I can say is: Does a beautiful, well-sculpted, shapely, bouncy, well-defined, pumped, tight and pert bod ever come by nature alone? Negative. So lets get one thing (and one thing only) straight: Neither does a beautiful, well-sculpted, shapely, bouncy, well-defined, pumped, tight and pert mass of curls. To which my friends say: “I should have such problems.”
Call me a kvetch. But all my life I’ve tangled with the will of my own hair.
Since I don’t have the couiffing-entourage that my celebrity curly-haired counterparts like Nicole Kidman et al, thank you very much, boast, I’ve got to do it myself. My husband doesn’t understand it (but what does he know, he started losing his in college, the same time I was dipping my locks in chestnut Hennas and licorice cellophanes, he was counting the strands on his pillow each morning). He doesn’t understand why I can’t buy the big jug of blue Jell-O in the drug store and be done with it? But my naturally curly, simultaneously coarse and fine, chemically-treated, overstressed, with a tendency-toward-dryness hair won’t respond to the cheap stuff. I need an individual product for each concern my hair expresses: Pastes and gels, gel sprays and hair sprays; hair relaxers and relaxers that add body; body enhancing mousses and mousses that control flyaway hair; ends conditioners and root lifters; curl rejuvenators and anti-frizz lotions; texturizers, pomades, glosses, leave-in conditioners and rinse out conditioners. shampoos
Oh, and did I mention—my hair also needs a sunscreen.

No, not Botox

2008-03-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm too young to be a woman who doesn't want to look old. I'm also, I think, too old to be a woman who has to look young. Yet I wonder, will I...
-Ever get a dermal filler, wrinkle reduction, enhancement, augmentation, lipo, tummy tuck, or implant of any kind or anything that requires a knife or blade?
-How about an eyelid lift, brow fix, veneers, a mommy makeover, anything that hurts?
Botox?
-I guess the real question is: Will I ever again tell myself I'm doing just for me but, really, it's to fit in?

Would I, Could I, Have Said That?

2008-03-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

It's not unusual that another new web site is being launched; it's not a surprise that celebrity investors attracted media interest even before the official launch on March 8. It's a site for women--mature women. WowOWow.com is being brought to gestation by gals the general public has watched "grow up" in front of the camera--actress Candice Bergen, comedienne Whoopi Goldberg, 60 Minutes anchor Lesley Stahl, and scores more
.
That's great, the website and all, but what isn't are the none-too-surprising slams online sites like gawker.com threw at the venture. WowOWow.com aims to celebrate and engage women over 40, I get that. What I don't get is why this bothers people. Why it matters or, maybe even threatens them. I'm certain they'd deny being threatened by women, especially older ones, but still you have to wonder where the meanness comes from. There was no byline on the Gawker posting at http://gawker.com/5003560/celebrity-doyennes-launch-your-moms-new-favorite-site but I wondered who might have wrote it. The writer give a list of what the site should have been called. Nothing positive or even neutral is mentioned.

Yuck.

When I was younger I didn't understand, either, that life was more than how I looked when I was 20. I was self-centered that way--and scared, as many young women (and men are). Few people are fully formed at that age; living is the only way to mature. Might I have slammed such a venture by someone, say, my mother's age, or my sister's? Only if I were jealous; only if I could not see that I, too, were going to age. Because we all age.

Every one of us.

Read a New York Times article about the site here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/fashion/06WOW.html?_r=1&ex=1362546000&en=8e85dc8c5480c93b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

How Not To Look Old?

2008-03-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

Why does getting older seem to imply getting uglier? Why do women, especially, think this? It seems the more we focus on aging appropriately, on growing older gracefully, the more we expose our obsession with staying the same, with not growing up, with remaining stagnate. Book or not, Everything generates from within us anyway--from how we approach what we feed into our bodies to how we approach what we wear on our bodies. Our outer appearances only reflect this.

Try Botox or shun it; wear Spanx or don't. The bottom line is this: True beauty is about feeling peace in one's own body, own skin, own being. At some point we must release the girl, the woman we once were--even the woman we were yesterday--in order to live fully today. I am not the same person today I was when I was 20 or 30 or even 40, and for that I am grateful.

Here is another take. Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams, a mother in her 40s, comments about the book, How Not To Look Old, which was written by Today Show stylist Charla Krupp (see link below).
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/03/05/how_not_to_look_old/

Makeovers

2007-11-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

Like the makeovers in those glossy mags? I always did. Until I realized that the key to the successful makeover was giving the "model" the exact opposite of what she had. If she had long hair, they'd chop it off saying her tresses were weighing down her face. If she had short hair they'd add extensions, claiming her facial features needed softening. If she wore makeup they'd tell her to go more natural; if she wore none they'd make sure she was painted up for the photo.
Why, for women, must the solution always be found outside ourselves? Something different from who we are?

My hair is long and curly, snarls easily, can't be brushed when dry. It's dark brown like chestnuts; 3N out of the bottle. I finally found a color (Tints of Nature-$17.99 at Whole Foods) I can apply easily that rinses out without gooping up. I color every 2 weeks or so. My hair grows fast. Sometimes I'm messy; it splatters all over the shower like stippling, across the soap, and the tub, and it doesn't come out. (Ask my husband.) I'd shampoo my hair one week later only to find the diluted broth of 3N still swirling down the drain.

This I will do at my age. I'm not quite ready to go gray. I read about women who choose not to color their hair anymore, saying the gray is uplifting to their look. I'm not there, not yet. Should I be? These graying gals are like those who say we must be a slave to false beauty that adds color, rather than lets it fade away. Like now that they've decided gray is good, gray is the only way to go. Is that what insecurity disguised as bravado looks like?

Half my age

2007-11-10T16:05:00.000-08:00

I'm too young to be a woman this old. I was always the youngest. I'm the baby of my family--by 21 years. But now, at 46, I'm old enough to work in offices with men and women (boys and girls) who were not yet born when I reached the age of majority. I have finally reached the milestone where it is the truth to tell people that "I work with kids half my age."
"No way," a friend blinks, like a deer.
"Yes," I say. "It's true."
"But we're the same age," she says, swallowing the magnitude of this statement, as if, for herself, for the first time. Then she tells me I don't look old enough for that kind of math. I have the feeling the comment is really for her, that she is telling herself the same message, by way of me.
She blinks again, and this time tears fall. I know I am right.
I am right, not because I am clairvoyant, but because I understand. I, too, am climbing the chronological ladder. With each step I vacillate between defiant disbelief at how old I actually am, and the stages of loss that I'm not the girl-at-work-who-is-half-someones-age anymore.
I can't believe my smile lines are permanent now. Or that I have lines at the corners of my eyes named after the feet of crows.
Thing is, all this makes about as much sense as it did when I was 11, and muddling through another change of life, also for the first time. But I'm older now, and a bit wiser, just because I have lived and sometimes learned. So my goal is to dissect it, examine it and explain it to myself. This time around, I'm not going to be ashamed, or try to cover it up.
Let's take the journey together.
Meredith