My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life (13 page)

If an older person has that spirit, and all that life experience, is there anyone more badass? They’re not running down the basketball court slam-dunking, but older people like Joe have a stillness and a wisdom and hopefully a sense of humor about life that you can
only
achieve by having lived that long.

I want to be like that.

I don’t want to be the woman who’s angry at the world because the clock keeps ticking.

There’s a regular in my circuit training class who’s fifty-eight. Beau is lithe and has the biceps of a thirty-year-old. She works hard and has a bright smile. She’s spent a lot of time in the sun and the lines and freckles on her face reflect this. I don’t know if she frets about her skin, but her vibrancy compensates for any imperfections. Watching Beau one day, I realized that, in the end, the only one who really cares about how we look is us. Does anyone care that I’m forty-two, or
that I have this wrinkle here, or that tuck of cellulite there? Anyone?

Paradoxically, what people do tend to notice is how hard we’re trying to look young. If we look as if we care too much, and if we spend a lot of time and money on procedures and hair appointments and spa treatments and trainers, that isn’t appealing either. Most men hate it. Men tend to be intrigued by women who are happy, confident, and friendly. My very limited sampling includes Laird and some of his most accomplished pals, all of whom gravitate toward women who are self-possessed.

And who are these guys we’re trying to look so young for? When I see a twenty-year-old, he doesn’t appeal to me. I can recognize how handsome he might be, but my basic response is “What on earth would I do with
that
?” If trying to attract some youngster whom I’m not really interested in in any way is my sole reason for trying to look twenty-five, why bother? A young friend I used to play volleyball with took issue with this one day, pointing out that to be young and hot is to be wanted. But what about what
you
want? Being desired by someone else doesn’t make us a better person, or even a more beautiful person. I learned this at a very young age, when I was living with my aunt Norette, who was warm, fun, and hilariously straightforward.

Once, when she’d taken me to Sears to buy some clothes, the saleswoman asked if I was her daughter. Norette is five feet tall, and at age seven, so was I. “Does she look like my daughter?” she snorted.

But she treated me as if I were. She loved me, was interested in what I was about as a person, and I loved her more than anyone. Norette was scrappy and overweight; she carried a good extra hundred pounds on her small frame, but I couldn’t have cared less about her outward appearance.

Norette definitely influenced my attitude about aging: rather than try to be endlessly foxy, deep into middle age and beyond, my goal is to be handsome and distinguished and in command of my life. My goal is to be beloved; in the same way I love Aunt Norette, that’s how I want the people in my life to feel about me.

That doesn’t mean I don’t fear getting older. On a basic existential level aging is scary. Philosophers spend their lives pondering the real terror associated with dying. I’ve heard it said that some people, when they’re extremely old or extremely sick, might be ready to die. They might look at their lives and feel tired of the struggle. They might look at their middle-aged kids and think, “You know, I’ve heard that drama eight hundred more times than I really need to. I’m done.”

But before that time, it’s incredibly scary. It’s a weakening of your body, yourself. You might feel wise and be able to seize the day better than you once did, but the bod is giving out. And the big question arises: Why is it that we live this life, we perform, we have a family, we get our kids out, and then we become so enfeebled? It’s like having a beautiful dinner and eating a small piece of shit at the end.

The deterioration can be so humiliating. It’s not as if one day you’re bench-pressing a hundred and the next you’re peeing
in your pants in a movie theater. Usually it’s gradual and devastating. Tiny terrors all along the way. Perhaps the ultimate lesson of getting older is learning to check our egos at the door. Still, when I see friends in the thrall of this process, it breaks me up. I don’t want that for anyone. Losing our dignity and our independence is the fear beneath all the other anxiety about aging. It’s not so much the lines and sunspots; it’s more what the lines and sunspots signal: that life moves in only one direction.

Still, every day the sun rises, and each day is our own. I’m reminded of that Emerson quote, “No one suspects the days to be Gods.” The one advantage of being older is knowing that our days truly are numbered. Every day we wake up and think, “I can be an asshole, or I can be badass.”

Is there one modern American female who has not been trained to be hypercritical of her looks? Beginning at, oh, let’s say age eleven, are not all of us taught to inspect, analyze, and criticize every inch of our bodies? How’s our hair, skin, the length of our eyelashes, the shape of our butts, the size of our hips and breasts, and while we’re at it, the perkiness of those breasts? Let’s not forget our teeth or how white they are or the size of our lips. What if you have too much hair on your body? The checklist is endless.

The older we get, the less critical we should become about
our imperfections. At forty, we should be less critical than we are at thirty; when we’re fifty, less critical still. Back off on your head-to-toe inspections. Stay away from the heinous magnifying mirror you come across in hotel bathrooms.

In the morning, or before you go out, just do a once-over.

Do I have my moments of weakness? Absolutely. All the time. I am human. But I try to have the discipline to resist, with every ounce of will I can muster, the urge to overexamine and criticize.

Some days I tell myself that in ten years I’ll look back at how I am now and think how young and beautiful I was, and the thought of that makes me smile. None of us can escape the river of time, so let’s float down it gracefully and happily.

As they say in Hawaii “Never mind.” Which basically means let it go.

Just because you’re older now than when you started reading this chapter, and just because there’s nothing you can do, ultimately, but accept this as a natural part of human life, that doesn’t mean you should resign yourself to living in nothing but elastic-waist jeans and oversized tees and prop yourself in front of the TV or computer, and order fries with that. It doesn’t mean you should give up.

Michael Pollan, author of
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
, has the best, easiest mantra for eating. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly
plants.” I’d like to add: “break a sweat every day,” “don’t smoke,” and “get sleep.” You have to find the things that work for you. But the bottom line is that even if you’re celebrating your ninety-eighth birthday, you should still take care of yourself.

Having a blueprint for self-care also ensures that you don’t fall for every nonaging trend that comes down the pike. When one day you notice that butt line forming between your eyebrows you don’t shriek and think, “It’s time for a face-lift! A brow lift! Anything the plastic surgeon to the stars tells me to lift, I’m lifting!”

Once you reach a certain age, the big question on everyone’s minds seems to be what is your official position on getting “work” done. People ask me about it all the time, and my response is that I don’t know. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. If I’m still working I might like to freshen things up a bit one day, but I never want it to be a knee-jerk reaction.

Life is change, but one thing that never changes is that there’s always a gaggle of beauties who are younger than you, hotter than you, and gaining the attention of the world in a way that you’re unlikely to again, if you ever did in the first place. I’m not being negative; there are also people a hell of a lot older, more decrepit, and less fortunate than you.

I have three daughters, all of whom are blossoming flowers. I don’t want to compete with them, or let their youth torture me. I want to enjoy watching them come into their
own vibrant colors and celebrate all of their milestones. Here is the secret: I’m not in a race with them, or anyone for that matter. You can’t be better or worse than anyone if you are not competing or comparing yourself to them. I know the torment of trying to race with someone. Try being in fashion surrounded by girls so beautiful they take your breath away. Or play a sport where some girls are so athletic and fluid their power just oozes out of every pore.

Bela has blossomed into a young woman, and even with Reece you can see that it’s moments away. Intuitively, I’ve felt myself move to the side. But then, I’ve never wanted to be a person who was right in the middle anyway. That wasn’t my thing. I didn’t want the attention, even though because of my size I had it anyway. But I didn’t seek it. I knew it wouldn’t make
me
happy. Seeking attention for the sake of attention felt like trying to lure other people into giving me something, and I knew that wouldn’t make me happy. What makes me happy? Do I feel good about the way I look? Am I comfortable in my clothes? Do I feel as if I’m representing who I really am?

Don Wildman founded Bally Total Fitness, but around our house he’s known for his nine Ironman competitions, his devotion to heli-snowboarding, mountain biking, and stand-up paddling. If I haven’t seen him around for a while, I assume he’s in New York running a marathon or paddling the length of the Hawaiian Islands on a surfboard. Did I mention that
Don’s seventy-nine? Laird, a mere forty-eight, trains with the Wild Man from time to time—a two-hour circuit that has been known to make professional athletes throw up. The most inspirational thing about Don is that, to him, his age is irrelevant. Sure, he eats an excellent diet—low in red meat, low in fat, high in plants—and takes supplements, including glucosamine for his increasingly creaky knees, but his main concern is the next adventure. His age doesn’t keep him from doing one thing he wants to do.

I amuse myself imagining Don Wildman refusing to go to the beach because he thought he looked bad in a bathing suit, or Don Wildman skipping a day of snowboarding because the sun on the mountain that day was harsh and might cause more wrinkles or Don Wildman saying no to a mountain bike trip because he didn’t want to look foolish because he wasn’t a twenty-five-year-old hottie.

All that Don, or Laird, too, for that matter, care about is being able to do what they want to do. They don’t think about their crow’s-feet.

In this regard, I think women should aim to age as men do. To be brave enough to say, “Yeah, I have a wrinkle or two, what of it? That’s who I am.” I find it helpful to focus on what makes me genuinely happy, which then helps me project the kind of confidence that comes from feeling good about yourself. It helps me to remember that we are not only attracted to people because they are young and/or good-looking, but also because they are comfortable in their own skin, no matter their age.

If there’s anything good to be said about losing a parent when you’re a child, it’s that you learn the hard lesson early that time is precious. Right in front of your eyes there is the reality: a person really can be here one day and gone the next.

We all know this intellectually, yet we mismanage our time anyway. Some of us are superefficient, multitasking our heads off, filling our hours with chores, family demands, stuff that pops up on our screens, assuming that as long as we’re “swamped” we’re spending our time well. Then, when we do have down time, we’re too discombobulated to use it wisely. How many times have I found myself with a blissful quiet hour to myself, that I then spend cruising for shoes online that I know I’m never going to buy?

From day to day I try to get everything done I need to, then leave the door open for who knows what. Hey, let’s go for a swim or a bike ride. Let’s have a living room dance party.

Spontaneity is what makes life feel like an adventure, and we need a little of it every day.

We moms tend to get stuck on automatic pilot. “My family is my first priority,” we say, without realizing this is actually a big-picture priority. Hour to hour, day to day, depending on what’s going on, you really can put off the laundry or scheduling your kid’s next playdate. On the day you’re getting your appendix out, your health is the top priority, and the hubster and kids can make their own macaroni and cheese.

We need to know our priorities, but also that they aren’t engraved on tablets like the Ten Commandments. We can change and rearrange them.

I imagine my priorities as existing on tiers, with the most important stuff on the top tiers. Fluffing the pillows? Probably (hopefully) bottom tier. Feeding the fam? Up near the top. But there are many other tiers, and given the day, they can be shuffled around according to what absolutely needs to get done.

Let’s say it’s a Monday, and you’ve had intimacy with your husband on Sunday; that could actually slide down to a lower tier. (Yes, even nookie has a tier.) But as the days pass, sex starts moving up until it’s top-tier important.

If you trained on Monday and it’s Tuesday, training could
be tucked onto a lower tier. If Tuesday’s schedule is suddenly crazy because one of your kids got sick at school and had to be picked up, or the furnace went out and the repair guy’s on his way, you can skip working out altogether. But the next day, Wednesday, training gets moved back up. For that day, it’s a top-tier priority.

Having sex, working out, making the perfect dinner, scrubbing the bathrooms spotless—not killer important every day. If you had an awesome, multicourse dinner last night, maybe tonight it’s a one-pot dinner. Or Chinese takeout. If the kids have four activities Thursday, it’s okay to bum around Friday.

Take care of the top-tier items, then do something for yourself. Read a book, work on your knitting, call somebody up and go for a walk. We need to get over the idea that if we have a free hour between, say, 2:30 and 3:30 that we need to jam it with chores or compulsive emailing. You don’t have to know all this seven months in advance. At the beginning of the day you can make some executive decisions about what you need to pay attention to and what you can let ride.