“Firm, Baby, Firm” is the name of a new lotion with collagen I just started using. The skin on my arms and hands seems tissue-thin these past few years and I get little unexplained cuts and abrasions; the doctor suggested the collagen to address what he suspects is a medication side-effect.
I
take more medications now than ten years ago but so do most of my friends who
are roughly my age. We’re good at playing “Name That Statin.”
Just
started using an under-eye roll-on to attack dark circles and puffiness. I
glance in the mirror and see a raccoon.
“After
age 70 it’s just patch, patch, patch,” Jimmy Stewart once said to Johnny
Carson. To explain to those who are young, Johnny Carson was star of the Tonight
Show for a long time and was awfully good at it. Jimmy Stewart was the Tom
Hanks of his era. If you’re too young to know who Tom Hanks is, I cannot help
you.
I’m
not 70 yet but the digits increase every birthday and somehow I’ll be a prime
age but not a prime number on my next birthday—63. It’s not possible to explain
how this happened. As a child I thought 19 was absurdly old. The five-year-old
me would have no idea what to do with this gray-white, bearded, emotionally
weathered version of himself, and to be fair I wouldn’t much know what to do
with that kid other than give him dessert and try to answer his barrage of
questions with exotic lies.
Aging
is bizarre. We don’t sign up for it but are enrolled anyway, somewhat like a
cable TV marketing scam. It’s not our fault but we’re supposed to cope with it
as it gradually robs us of powers we once took for granted.
What’s
happening? Among other things, our telomeres are unraveling. I have just enough
understanding of the science of this to say that it’s bad—quite bad. Some
geneticists suggest that if we could re-wrap our telomeres, the effects of
aging could be halted or reversed. I’m hopeful that we might do better than
halt aging some day so that I can once again have fine motor control and neater
eyebrows, but I’m not betting we’ll learn to fix telomeres in time for me.
Perhaps for some millennials though they’ll complain anyway.
Are
there benefits to aging? Well, AARP has some nice discounts. That’s all I’ve
got. But don’t us older folk have a greater stockpile of wisdom? Sure, but also
more short term memory gaps and an urgent, escalating desire for simple flip
phones.
Aging
creates new opportunities, too—now I play a game called “I know more people
who’ve had knee surgery than you do,” and it spurs countless hours of
discussion. One need not have had knee surgery to play although then one could
count oneself in the tally.
I’m
tempted to rewrite a song lyric—this is a constant for me—and the one I have in
mind is “War,” by the Motown artist Edwin Starr. To that tune’s chorus, try
this:
Age!
Huh! (Good God, ya’ll)
What
is it good for?
Absolutely
nothing! (Say it again)
But
perhaps that’s too defeatist. And turn up the music, damn it, my hearing was
ruined by rock concerts a long time ago.
Aging
beats death so far as I can tell but only by half a length in the Preakness,
and it won’t win races forever. So, it is but a state to be tolerated for a
season, defied when possible by meds or physical therapy or what one friend
calls Colorful Personality Disorder.
In
the end, aging will dissolve and I’ll see heaven or perhaps nothingness, and
I’m not sure I have a strong preference at this time. To see Jesus and ask
those questions I’ve always wondered about (what the hell did you mean by the
sword statement in Matthew 10:34?) and be enveloped by God’s grandeur—sounds
great. To sleep indefinitely also sounds great. Do not make me pick.
In
the meantime, it’s “Firm, Baby, Firm” and under-eye rollers and assorted meds
and sundry colonoscopies.
But
I’m looking forward to Colorful Personality Disorder—which I’ll manifest the
second I retire. You are forewarned.
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