I’m freshly, garishly dressed, having spent most of my Saturday morning watching the latest music clips on Rage. The inspiration is obvious. My hair is teased at least a hand’s height above my head, I’m still trying to unstick my eyelashes from the deluge of hairspray I’ve used and my outfit is red and blue hair ties (brave choice for a redhead), red shirt, blue skirt, red tights, blue shoes. I trail my Mum as we go to the shops, when suddenly I see them – the Year 12 girls. Their maturity is captivating, poise and grace as thick around them as the smell of grape HubbaBubba. One day, I tell myself, I’m going to be 18 and mature like they are, I’m going to know what’s going on, and life is going to make sense.

Mid 1990’s

In the one year I became old enough to vote, legally drink, join the Royal Australian Navy and be legally considered an adult. Standing on an Army firing range, Steyr rifle casually hanging off one arm, the reality of my age smacked me upside the head. What on earth are they THINKING? I asked myself. I’m only 18! Just months out of high school! Don’t give me a GUN – what are you, nuts? A baritone boom of my surname interrupts my incredulity, then I saluted and answered my Captain. One day, I told myself as he walked away, command and bearing as obvious as his insignia, I’ll be 32. I’ll know what’s going on, I won’t be making stupid decisions, and life is going to make sense.

Mid 2000’s

I’m up to my mammaries in parenting, marriage, church and work. I know I’m older (after all, I’m the one who buys the candles for the cake!) but certainly don’t know everything like my younger (and obviously delusional) self had hoped. Of a Sunday, or at Homemaking/HFPE/Visiting Teaching meetings I’d watch women with teenage children have complete conversations about  – sorry, what were you saying? I just had to stop my son shaving the dog – while wearing coordinated, unwrinkled outfits. Their tall sons would stoop way, way down to better tickle my sons, and I’d think One day, I’m going to be the mother of teenagers. Life will be settled, and I’ll have time to get organised, and I’ll know what I’m meant to be doing and be on time.

The last three years

I got divorced, became a single parent, moved twice thousands of kilometres, started a university degree and seriously, regularly believed that I was going insane, if I had not already left Sanity far behind me. I have many of the trappings of responsible adulthood. I vote, I feed my children vegetables regularly, I do what has to be done more than what I want to do, I say please and thank you even to people I don’t like. I don’t start fist-fights anymore (no matter how much I long to) and while still a natural redhead, have discovered chrome detailing I wasn’t expecting. I pay my bills, I budget, I wash the dishes, I obey the road rules. I fulfil my responsibilities to my parents, I teach my children and consider life insurance when the ad comes on the television.

While sometimes I feel as old as a mountain, groaning and creaking my way across my to-do lists, at other times my inner Real Me jumps out. Real Me escapes the dishes to go outside in the rain and splash in the puddles. Real Me lies on the grass and says “WOW” at the incredible sky. Far from putting away my younger love of science fiction, now I clench it even more fervently to my chest and read far too late into the early morning, knowing full well the havoc it will cause the next day but gleefully not caring.

Turns out I’m a grown up. I don’t know what’s going on all the time, I’m not very organised, continue to make spectacularly stupid mistakes and quite often I’m not certain I know what I’m doing. I’m not even looking at future ages anymore, saying that by THEN I’ll be THIS, or THAT, or WHATEVER. At the moment, just today – and the careful, hopeful plans unfurling each day – is enough. However old or young I may really be.

Have you become a grown up? How does it happen? Does your age surprise you? What makes you feel like a grown up and what makes you squeal, jitterbug or dance in an explosion of youth?

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My mother has been making daily visits to my grandmother in her retirement community and now in her assisted living center for about ten years. My mother often likens the experience to having a baby—only you can’t just grab the car seat and take it with you if you need to go somewhere. It tethers you in a different way. Still, she manages the daily demands cheerfully, in a way few people could.

Caregiving for the aging is so different from caregiving for the young. Instead of a positive independence-increasing developmental trend, it dips in peaks and valleys of negative decline. There is no finite time span—it just stretches out indefinitely, unlike the way you wait out the terrible-twos or midnight feedings, knowing something else is on the horizon. It is a vast line of uncertainty. There is a lot less support and glamor for this season of caregiving; there are no showers, fancy strollers, cute outfits, and commiserating mom’s group playdates—only bedside commodes, walkers, incontinence, doctors’ visits, and elastic-waist pants.

Don’t get me wrong—I want to lead a long, full, happy productive life. Longevity in my spritely twenties and thirties sounds pretty good. But I have to question, do I really want an extra few years of late 90s?

Assuming retirement in the mid-sixties, living to 100 would leave me with thirty-five years of unstructured life—and how many of those fully functional? I wonder how I will navigate the stage where I am at the mercy of my physical body, in a negative slide. What about when I lose mobility or my grasp on reality—then what?

With this stage stretching out longer and longer it’s becoming more complex. Two weeks ago I heard startling statistics about the financial preparedness (or rather unpreparedness) of baby boomers for retirement. Obviously end-of-life care is one of those ostrich-head-in-the-sand social issues. No one is talking about the fiscal ramifications, let alone the societal or personal ones. This wasn’t our parents’ issue; it’s the byproduct of an increasingly medically savvy and advanced world. People didn’t live so long before, our family networks are now less intact, and economic demands require ever more workplace involvement across the lifespan.

How many of today’s thirty-somethings will be forced to dip into their own pockets, or work a job just to pay the $2500-3500 a month (42K per yr) for assisted living care or else shoulder the entire exhaustive burden of 24-hour care in their own homes? Even with fabulous institutional care there are many demands. Our workplace family policies certainly aren’t equipped to deal with the constantly on-call needs of the aging, especially lower income jobs. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” extends to an exhausting reality far beyond the cheesy TV commercials.

I hear my peers, many of whom left the workforce to raise families, talk about their plans to return to education or work after their children are gone. Few of them have figured their aging parents into this equation. I see the women of my mother’s generation juggling the need to care for aging parents while balancing their roles as mothers and grandmothers—let alone working or pursuing personal interests. I watch as my own parents attempt to navigate their approaching retirement, still bounded by the responsibilities of having aging parents.

Don’t get me wrong. I love that my sons have been able to know their great-grandmother. These last few years have changed her; she is very different from the grandmother I knew. She was my blue-blooded grandmother who grew up in the Great Depression, but never felt its effects, who grew up in a life of silver cups and “help.” She never once babysat my sister and me when we visited, and she wasn’t really the playing type. She was a firm believer that children should be seen and not heard. She was more in her element at a cocktail party or catalog shopping for new clothes, and she was always quick to offer up the sternest looks if our elbows so much as grazed the dinner table. Now she is another person, one who lives to see her great-grandchildren, ironically most of whom are rambunctious boys. She claps her hands with glee when they bring her Frostys from Wendy’s and eat them on the patio with her.

My boys love to visit “Gigi.” My ten-year-old patiently sits by her in the dining room, crafting origami planes to decorate her room, as she slowly raises one forkful of chicken at a time with her one still functioning awkward hand. My five-year-old hides under her hospital-style bed and club chairs in a simplistic game of hide and seek that makes her squeal with delight. She beams as my three-year-old hugs her leg as she sits in her wheelchair. I find their compassion and patience inspiring.

When our vacation visits are over my grandmother descends into tearful hysterics and I am left fearing the one-day slowly unraveling edges of my own mortality.

What are your thoughts on longevity? What are your experiences personally? Practically? Are you prepared for its impact on your life? What do you see in store for our society? Have you worked end-of-life care-giving into your equations?

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She was also always dying. Diagnosed with severe kidney disease at age 30, doctors gave her two years to live. She did what anyone would do with limited time—she lived it to the fullest.

Then she kept living. Years, and more years, all the time haunted by the specter of a youthful death. All the time living hard and trying to squeeze out every drop of experience.

When I was young, I wanted to age like my grandma. She rolled down hills, laughed often and loud, teased and played and glittered. I thought she was the definition of aging gracefully. It’s only now that I realize how misguided I was. I didn’t realize at the time that Grandma hadn’t started to age yet—not really. I thought of her as old only because of my relationship to her, not because she actually was.

Watching her over the past few months, I’ve made a few mental notes to myself:

Don’t get a dog.

Believe people when they tell you what is real.

She doesn’t remember her sister-in-law. She’s not sure who her some of her neighbors are. She doesn’t recognize her doctor. But she can still tell stories about her piano professor, can still hear his voice telling her to watch the rhythm in her left hand.

Last week I got a call at 10 p.m. from my mom. She was in California—her first night on vacation. “I hate to ask this,” she said, “but I’ve been trying to call Grandma every fifteen minutes since eight o’clock and she’s not answering. I’m afraid she’s fallen or is sick or something. Can you go over and check on her?”

My mom is now in the fourth and final round of parental caretaking. She has already watched the slow decline of my dad’s dad, my dad’s mother, and her own father. But this—this no one had ever considered. Her eternally youthful mother who had cheated death for fifty years was not supposed to dwindle. She was supposed to be gone in an instant, in a heartbeat. The cloud of becoming motherless, a cloud my mom has lived with most of her life, is now finally lowering in earnest and it’s a slow, black shadow. Not the expected lightning. We are all feeling the chill.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Mom,” I say, wanting to reassure her, wanting her to be able to relax and let go a little.

“I know, but I won’t be able to sleep unless I know she’s not over there lying on the floor,” she says.

So I grab a flashlight, find my key to Grandma’s house, and head over. I tell myself the entire way that nothing is wrong, that she’s probably just watching TV. But when I enter her neighborhood, my stomach twists at the tiny thought that I might find her on the floor. As I pull around the corner, I see the lights on in her house and feel a little better.

I’m afraid of frightening her by coming so late. When I unlock the door, I see her in the kitchen, her red satin pajamas half buttoned, her hair wild. The house smells like old furniture and stale dog urine.

“Hi Grandma,” I say sheepishly.

“I thought you were the boogey man!” she says.

I tell her why I came. She’s been playing the piano for the past two hours and couldn’t hear the phone. “I had to get through all of my Chopin,” she says.

“Did you make it?” I ask.

“Almost.”

Almost. Her hands are shaking.

It’s indescribably sad to watch her lose herself. She’s lost so many things—keys, bills, hearing aids, pills. A husband. Her sense of reality. Her whirlwind personality, her brilliant spirit, is fighting, fighting, fighting against the confusion, but the struggle makes it harder. There is no peace. There is no lying down, no going softly. “I will live my life my way,” she insists. My mom keeps waiting for a point at which things will get easier, a point where she won’t remember that she’s no longer home, that the dogs are gone, that she used to play Chopin under the lights with a symphony.

I no longer want to age like my grandma. But I’m terrified that I will.

Have you been able to find grace in all the varieties of aging?

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In honor of Father’s Day, we bring you a post by guest Jennifer Wunderlich.  Beyond composing grocery lists and the occasional “Thank You” card, Jennifer is a novice to writing.  But oh!  How she loves it!  Married to her sweet husband of 16 years, together they own a sign and graphics company  and try to maintain the peace between their four nutso but lovable, children.  When Jen isn’t at home with her family, she’s in the trenches at a local hospital as a full time phlebotomist.  Though she loves drawing blood what she really loves are road-trips, singing at the top of her lungs, laughing irreverently and chocolate.   Jen recently started her own blog   mainly to keep herself sane. Really and truly.

I could see it in their eyes.

These sons, these three grown men, stayed with their father through every hour of the day and night and I could see it in their eyes. I could hear it in their voices–not so much from the words they spoke, but from their hushed tones and wistful timbre. I could feel it in the air, tingling and crackling despite their efforts to create a quiet haven for their sick father. There was no stopping it or stalling it. Time had come and surprised them all, as it seemed to bid their father’s body to age and his mind to slow to a plod. They wore it on their faces; when they glanced at each other you could almost see it travel as a mindless thought from one to another: Where does the time go? When did this happen?

I was a visitor, not welcome very often, but a necessary evil. Entering his room early in the morning and then returning later when the shadows crept up the walls, I was there on the doctor’s errand, sent to draw the father’s blood. I often felt like an intruder, hearing the talk among them cease as I entered and feeling as if I had lifted the lid on the tin of memories and anecdotes they were so carefully unfolding. Often making small talk, I would smile gently and speak loudly, as his hearing wasn’t what it used to be. Or so he said. His name was Ralph. He was a kind man who didn’t wince when I had to draw his blood. He always had a gentle smile and was very gracious. For that I was most grateful. He would be eighty-five next week; there was going to be a huge party thrown in his honor. I would tease him that perhaps the party would be too wild for someone as young as he was. And he chuckled, more to himself than to me. 

On a particular afternoon I knocked on his door and opened it to find his grown sons standing around him as he sat, freshly showered, in a chair. Between the three of them they were attempting to shave his face. Gently, almost gingerly, they helped their father lift his head as they ran the Norelco razor over his chin and cheeks, careful not to bump or tousle him. It was a reverent moment between a father and his sons. I couldn’t help but think how time had marched this family along the path that led them to this hospital room. It was almost a cruel trick. Here he was, the father, being taken care of by his sons as if he were the child. Eighty-five next week! Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if he would be having an eighty-fifth birthday party. He was ill. I hoped that time would spare him, that he could celebrate with his family.

Mercifully, in the end, Ralph did get to return home after a few days. Though he was alive when he left, my memory of him continued to haunt me after he had gone. I couldn’t help but reflect how time had pushed me along as well. Thirty-eight years old, four children, a husband, a dog, a parakeet, and a mortgage. One day would my children be sitting by my bedside as the caretakers while I was the child in the bed? Where does the time go? How does this happen?

There are a million-and-one ways that time passes us by. We have become accustomed to its stealth, no longer noticing when it passes day to day. Oh, sometimes we stop long enough to the surprise of realizing how the children are growing, but usually it passes unheralded, quietly. It passes with each dish and floor and hand that we wash. Kisses, embraces, fights, and everyday conversations don’t slow it, nor do moments that we purposefully try to hold onto for longer than we should. In fact, the more we try to slow time down, to savor what it is we are afraid of losing, the more stubborn it seems to be. It takes our memories and our money. It fades our photos and wrinkles our faces. Time is a bandit. Time is slippery. Time is a mystery. We can’t slow it or stop it or save it or speed it up. Time is its own master and answers to no one. Time is OUR master.

I don’t doubt that Ralph saw his frail legs under the cool sheets of the hospital bed and wondered to himself where the time had slipped to. Ralph had lived his life, raised his family, made a living, and had done what he needed to do, while at the whim of Master Time. The little hands he used to help wash and protect were now washing and protecting and caring for him. Time made it so.

I could see it in their eyes. They didn’t have to say it because I knew it,
for I wonder, too: where does the time go?

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Today I went to help my mom. I helped her take a shower, washed her hair, gave her a haircut, and did laundry. Okay, I even cleaned up the poop and pee in the potty chair. I cleaned the toilets, even though I had cleaned them the day before. I witnessed her shaky hands and weak legs as she attempted to get out of bed. I held her up as we walked to the spare bedroom so that I could change the sheets on her bed—again something I had done the day before.

As I sat on her bed and chatted with her a few moments—she eating a lettuce and tomato sandwich I had made her—I was taken back 30 years to when I was about 17 years old. After a few weeks of excruciating pain, Mom had finally had surgery on her neck. She recovered for—again—I don’t know how many weeks. As a busy teenager I ran in and out of the house, occasionally stopping by her bedroom, but then I was off doing my own thing. I remember pangs of guilt for not doing much for her. In retrospect I know that I was in denial that my mom was “broken,” that she might need my help. I am sure I have tucked away what really happened, but memories I am able to yank from my subconscious mind remind me that I was self-centered and weak.

During those selfish teenage years my favorite scripture became Ether 12:27: “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble….and my grace is sufficient…for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” I remember rejoicing at the understanding that I didn’t have to beat myself up about my weaknesses. They were there to serve a purpose; and with humility and through the Atonement, those weaknesses could be made strong.

So, for years I have relied in the Savior to help me be less selfish. I believe He has often given me the gift of charity toward others. I believe that He has forgiven me for my selfish neglect of my mother when I was 17. His forgiveness might have been enough. But through His love and wisdom He has given me an opportunity to accomplish my own redemption—to ransom my own actions. Even though the opportunity to comfort, dress, clean and feed my Mom is at times sad, it is also a satisfying moment to love in a way that I was not capable—or at least did not choose to—30 years ago.

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I never thought about it happening on a play date. My new-found friend and I had spent a delightful day making bread, mixing soup and baking cookies. While the kids played happily, we talked about art, literature, church, friends and living providently while we swapped funny stories and checked on the kids. We talked about our families. Genetic traits. Birth order. Age.

We were sitting on my friend’s playroom floor picking up toys while our boys played together; her second son, my last, when I noticed the briefest of pauses. She said “You’re 44?” And like a jolt it occurred to me that a twelve year age difference could be a big deal.

With her, I knew it wasn’t. She said (in a way that made me feel like an icon) “I hope I look like you when I’m 44.” So what if I felt a little older. My outer shell was creeping past my inner self. The realization hit, and it sat in my gut for a few days. But she had seemed surprised when she inquired, so maybe it wasn’t as blatant as I thought. Should I be making reservations with AARP or could I still feel comfortable with friends more than a decade younger than me? She said she wanted to use me as a leg model in her newest series of paintings. I made a sarcastic remark about middle aged legs, but I felt hope.

I have often thought about what age people are on the inside. I’ve talked about it, blogged about it and wondered if aging really matters. I have a good friend near 80 who drives herself across country twice a year. She loves the freedom, the scenery, her music and being able to really enjoy the journey. I think of her, and strive to enjoy my journey now. She is the best at finding really cool places to visit. She’ll tell me, with a sparkle in her eye that she wants to take me on a field trip. When I’m with her, she makes me feel like the most important person in her life. I know I’m not, but I love her gift of making people feel of worth. I wish she lived closer.

As I reflect on my friendships, whether I’m the older or younger in the pairing, I wonder if I make the other person feel as important, or if I’m still leeching because I need to feel validation.

Growing up I felt worlds apart in age from my parents. They were too old to be in touch with my generation. I remember staring at my mom’s hands in church and thinking they looked so old. I love that memory now because I know what I saw was evidence of years of hard work.

When my own daughter rubs my softer, wrinkling skin in church I feel contentment and don’t worry that she finds my older skin strange or unattractive. She also takes pleasure in plucking the gray hairs from my head. I tease her and tell her I’ve earned them. I want her to know that I’m okay with aging physically, but I long to make her understand that my inner self isn’t too far removed to be able to relate to where she’s at in life.

I love that the relationship with my parents has morphed into more of a feeling of being on the same team. We’re working towards the same goal, and they’ve had a few years to gain some valuable experience and important resources I can draw from.

So here’s the thing: I can hang out with my 80 year old friend and feel like her peer, and I can spend the day with my 32 year old friend and see no age discrepancy. When my husband tells me I’m exhibiting a trait that reminds him of my mother, I tip my head back and smile. Inside I’m laughing. A blip in time makes a difference. I like who I am despite the fact that the inside doesn’t always match what’s on the outside.

I’m planning on living a long and happy life. I hope I can make people feel of value along the way. So bring it on, aging crust! The soft bread-y part of me will probably never mature much past 34.

Does age affect how you think about or act around people? Do you act differently to accommodate a more mature or younger audience? Does feeling older than someone invoke negative emotion(now that you’re not a teenager)? How old are you on the inside?

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Pairing the two for closer inspection it was obvious Barbie plus had been nipped and augmented at every curve from her decidedly Brazilian derriere to her obviously silicone “amendments”. Her calves and ankles were skinnier,  her brows lifted.  Normal Barbie has always been freakishly disproportionate, but this doll had no resemblance to normal womanly features. No supple, subtle gracious curves like those of  the nude marble Greek sculptures I used to draw in my art musuem classes, simply an awkward conglomeration of classically fake “plastic surgery” features.  Don’t get me wrong plastic surgeons can do amazing things.  I have witnessed first hand over 1000 reconstructive plastics procedures on medical missions.  I’ve sat with a 17 year old boy as he looked in a mirror for the first time following a cleft lip repair and cried with relief because he said someone would marry him now. I’ve seen it at it’s height of  transformativeness and it excessive lows of shallow vanity. 

Over vacation, I watched an old Sinatra flick, Pal Joey, with my sister.  I stared at the curvaceous women, a stark reminder of where we’ve come in our lean idealization of the female form, no more glory for the Rubens-esque. My sister then commented on her recent observance of Linda Carter’s very womanly Wonder Woman physique.  Wow, my legs would’ve fit right in, I could’ve made it in a late 50’s nightclub or better yet as a lassoing superheroine.  Still today as a decidely confident woman, I feel some apologetic twinges of self consciousness as I peel down at the beach.

At Barnes and Noble one night,  I ran across a magazine on all the latest advances in aesthetic beauty. This glossy mag was half as thick as a phone book. Pages on improving your eyelashes– seriously eyelashes (no not mascara) we’re talking growth stimalulators, lash transplants (I do know that there are good reasons for this post burns/chemo, but that was not the target audience).  Half a ream on every type of laser treatment, injectable fillers, and body contouring.  I was grotesquely fascinated.  I couldn’t believe there was a  magazine devoted to this.  Side columns filled with humanizing profiles of the top docs for each body “trouble spot”.  No woman could look through that magazine without thinking that nature had dealt her a nasty hand, and finding flaws in her body she had never even before contemplated.

We do these things because we can. In our advanced society we have the technology, we have the money, we have the leisurely lifestyles that let us sit around and worry about our eyelashes and minor wrinkles. What is it to be a girl who grows up where your perceived normal is not natural? It’s all been sucked, tightened, and plumped to the tune of thousands of dollars.  What is it to look around in a crowd thinking “that” is natural and you must be aberrant? What are the deeper implications of all this on women and girls, body image, and sexuality? Is it just part of our times and as natural, as getting new furniture or renovating a room?

 Here were Elder Jeffrey R Holland thoughts from October 2005:

In terms of preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical, this is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face in the modern world. And if adults are preoccupied with appearance—tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything that can be remodeled—those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep through to children. At some point the problem becomes what the Book of Mormon called “vain imaginations.”  And in secular society both vanity and imagination run wild.   

Still aesthetic procedures are on the rise. It’s becoming part of our culture and where does it fit in LDS culture? I hear alot of thoughts from women. Some say it’s in attempts to keep their husbands happy.  A current popular one among moms is “restored to my former glory” line. “I sacrificed to  have kids and I deserve to be back to the way it was before”.  Or ”It’s just always bugged me”. While I try to understand these, I also try to keep a certain perspective, I feel pretty grateful to have a body that for the most part works well, claim those few inches that tag along unwantedly around my waist as battle scars for getting 3 boys into this world, and want to be known for who I am and what I do - not how I fill out a sweater.  I want to accept age and change graciously. How would I tell a daughter who inherited “imperfect” features that she’d better start saving 10 grand to look “normal?”  Maybe these beliefs antiquated, conservative– am I the last of the lead pencil club (or rather non-plastics club)?

Tell me your thoughts? Is there an intersection of beauty and faith; our bodies, our money, our stewardship? Is there a moral /spiritual dimension to beautifying? To nipping and tucking? Where does it begin and end? When does it cross the line into destructive or vain? What do the ”before and after shots”  of this phenomenon on our society reveal? 

And all our men readers, I’d love to hear from you also…

(P.S. Lest I get Barbie flack I am cool with her, no need to defend)

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