Youthful Daydreams of Aging Gracefully -- NOT!

As a very young woman I envisioned growing old gracefully. I pictured myself as the gracious, elderly neighbor that baked cookies for all the neighborhood kids, arranged flowers for the church, had an ever-blooming rose garden, enjoyed high tea each afternoon and would be blessed with happy smile wrinkles, shining, sparkly gray hair and a still stylish figure.

Now, friends, neighbors and other interested parties; it’s time for some of those glowing attributes I dreamed about at twenty-two to start appearing before it’s too damned late. In all probability I attributed to my young self more sterling character traits than I could ever hope to achieve. (In case you missed it; that’s an excuse).

First of all – let me tell you about the kids that live in my neighborhood. These are not cookie-eating cherubs. The first that comes to mind is Jeremy. Jeremy, in and of his own darling self, in my mind should be the poster child for birth control. He says he’s six but I’m more inclined to believe he’s 36, a midget, shaves every morning before daylight and was thrown off a passing circus train for harassing the lions into nervous breakdowns.

Jeremy can climb my six-foot chain link fence faster than the speed of light – and that means going both ways. He can be over the fence and in the backyard before the word "don’t" can clear my lips. He can also escape back over the same fence – leaving – before Annie Oakley could get a shot off. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t open fire on children but if I was so inclined – this kid would be first on my hit list.

I live like a prisoner in my own house. Because of Jeremy I must keep all the doors locked and bolted. On several occasions I’ve turned around in my kitchen – believing myself to be alone – and there the sneaky little sucker stands. I’m convinced he’s spent an inordinate portion of his six years on this planet honing his cat burglar skills.

I’ve even made futile attempts to make friends with Jeremy; laboring under the misapprehension we could come to some sort of an understanding about his free ranging field hippy habits. Our last conversation convinced me it really should be our last conversation.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters, Jeremy?"

"Yeah, two older brothers but they’re both in Huntsville!"

"Oh, they live in Huntsville – are they married?"

"Lady, they’re both in the pen – don’t you know what Huntsville is?"

That was our last enlightening conversation and I choose not to leave myself open to such disdain again. Simple biology tells me Jeremy must have parents but I’ve never seen them and don’t even know where Jeremy lives. If he’s not a midget, wasn’t thrown off a freight train and indeed does have a family; it’s more than likely they sent him outside to play and moved off and left him. I would!

As to my daydream rose garden; it went the same way all my other gardening efforts have gone – away! I must have the brownest thumb on the face of the earth. If I had all the rose bushes I’ve bought – and killed – side-by-each and stacked up on top of one another I could fence the biggest prison in the Texas Department of Corrections. For a fact, there’s not a prisoner living that would even consider trying to climb over all those dead, old, brown thorns! It would be a natural deterrent in it’s own right with nary a rose in sight!

As far as the church ever wanting me to arrange the flowers – there ain’t a Christian soul in the flock that has near enough blind faith to put me in charge of a plant – growing or cut. Seems some mouthy member spread the word about my gardening abilities and although they all diligently prayed for my brown thumbitis it didn’t cease, desist or result in a miraculous cure. Consequently, when committees are being chosen for various church activities I’m usually relegated to something like dusting big, heavy furniture – bottom line – anything I can’t damage or destroy and assuredly inanimate.

Now one would think serving tea or a tea party would be one thing any idiot can do. I agree – only I don’t like hot tea and don’t want to serve it! I think I just didn’t put much forethought into that daydream. My coffee expertise doesn’t sit well with most folks so I can’t go in that direction either. Having made "cowboy" coffee most of my life; my coffee is just too strong for most genteel folks and I gave up "won’t you have a cup of coffee" long ago due to the comments that were always forthcoming. The last time my brother was here he said, in all seriousness "you know, Sis, you could just break off a chunk of this stuff and serve it on a plate like pie." I bit my tongue and didn’t ask if he needed a fork!

As far as the "ideal, genteel, old lady appearance" I dreamed about – scratch that one entirely. Early on I did have some interesting laugh lines but only until they all ran together. Oh, they’re still laugh lines but having joined up they now look more like a crude map of the Ft. Worth Stock Yards.

Beautiful, silvery gray hair was not in the cards for me either. When I first started graying it was more like a big "plop" that was pretty close to my left eye. I’m not talking about a few gray hairs; I’m talking about one big spot that looked like I’d walked under a tree with a less-than-constipated bird in it and he nailed me. So, to the bleach bottle I went and it’s been that way ever since. My beautician friend begs me to make sure people know we’re only friends and she’s not responsible for my hair color. Her exact statement is "This hairdresser absolutely knows for sure – she didn’t do that and isn’t going to be blamed for it."

The one thing I may have daydreamed into reality is my shape. It’s a little heavier than it was as a young person but still fairly slim. When I really think about that – as tall as I am – if I’d gained enough weight to be fat I’d have to weigh 450 pounds. There is, however, a bit of shifting going on – not day-to-day you understand – but real steady. My once tiny waist no longer is. I don’t mean it’s no longer tiny I mean at some point it just flat out disappeared.

There also seems to be a steady migration of muscular body parts headin’ south. And skin, well what can one say about skin that’s been as thoroughly utilized as mine? The one thing I never considered when I was younger is skin seems to go into "growing mode" as one ages. All the extra goes under your chin, down your neck and forms little flippy-flaps under the tops of your arms. Skin also begins to adorn itself with strange brown spots and the occasional tiny mole (now there’s something charming to look forward to, huh?)

All this aging stuff, youthful daydreams aside, is simply a matter of attitude and timing. As I’m disgustingly healthy I find most of it amusing -- there’s something new and different about me every day. Having tea parties isn’t really a biggy and I don’t intend to enter any coffee making contests. My hair covers my head and this old body still regularly puts one foot in front of the other. As to the wrinkles – trust me, dear hearts, I earned a lot more than I’ve got and am only grateful they didn’t all materialize!

A dear friend, now departed, shared some good advice with me the last time I visited him. He said all his life he’d been swimming up stream and he’d decided it was time for him to just stand still in the stream of life and let the water come to him. That’s pretty good advice and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

Well – I have and I haven’t. There’s two things I’ve got to take care of before I go jump in life’s final puddle and wait: (1) Figure out why my thumb hurts (not the brown one -- the other one); and (2) spread some "don’t do that" all over Jeremy. I still think he’s a midget in a kid suit!