Beauty’s Only Skin Deep

Just to give you a little background here, I live in a small town. Our little retirement home is on a pretty, tree-lined street that has a direct path to the high school and our local swimming pool. Because of those destinations, we get many…and I mean MANY…teenagers passing by our house each day. Situated on a little rise over the street, often as I’m quietly working away up here in my little slice of heaven, these teenagers pass by, never aware that I’m within earshot.

For several weeks I’ve been working diligently at laying a brick sidewalk from the back of the house around the side to meet the front sidewalk. It’s been back-breaking work. I’ve removed the sod the entire way, divided and replanted many plants, scavenged about 150 bricks from various places, hauled them home in my truck, then unloaded them at the new sidewalk site, and spent hours on my hands and knees placing the brick. 

Sweaty and dirty, I stopped working today to get a drink of water and a little break. I was sitting on the little knoll in front of my house, lost in my own thought, when I heard two teenage girl voices approaching. Their conversation was spirited and giggly. It’s no surprise that both girls were working their cellphones as they walked along. In my old-lady kind of way, I knew they were in their own little la-la-land. 

Suddenly, a horn honked. I recognized the bright red, sporty-looking car of one of my bachelor friends, and gave a wave to him as he blew on by. Both of the girls, neither of whom actually saw the driver, quickly looked up with excitement. “Who was that?” one said to the other. “I don’t know. Nice car. I wonder who it was.”

I couldn’t help myself. I spoke up and said, “He was a friend of mine.”  

They looked up at me simultaneously. Obviously neither saw me until a spoke. However, here’s what REALLY torqued me about this little exchange...it was a look on their face. The look I can only describe as disdain! I could almost hear their thinking, “Who would be honking at you, old lady?”

Their arrogance was palpable! Do they think they are the only ones that emit enough beauty to have someone in a flashy car honk at them?

I’ve observed as time goes by, that we Wise Women of Age are not our mothers at our age. This whole blog that I write started with an essay titled “65 is the New 45.” My mother didn’t live to be 60. She died at the age of 58. However, even at my current age of 65, I’m a far better physical specimen than my mother ever was. I don’t think it wasn’t that she didn’t want to be. We’ve just had the information and education at our fingertips to provide healthier years of aging. 

Technology provides us with better health care than our mothers. Many of our World War II era mothers smoked cigarettes. We now know the dangers not only to our bodies, but also our complexions caused by smoking. We are nutritionally educated. Our mothers were meat and potatoes mavens, often topping off our dinners with high-calorie, decadent desserts. We women today now know what our mothers didn’t about physical activity and staying active. A body in motion stays in motion. We also know that life isn’t all work and no play, and we spend more time indulging ourselves. 

So what makes a woman beautiful at any age? Here are some of my thoughts on aging:

• Beautiful isn’t just physical. It's being comfortable in your own skin. It's a lifestyle.
• Don’t worry. Be happy. A Voice of America article refers to a study of 4,000 people over 5 years. Their study found that happy people had a 35 percent lower risk of death than the least happy.
• Self-image is how you perceive yourself. Your self-image is a number of self-impressions that have built up over time. If you project a positive self-image, people will be more likely to see you as a positive, capable person.
• How do you perceive life? Are you a glass half-full or half-empty kind of person? A 30-year study of 447 people at the Mayo Clinic found that optimists had around a 50 percent lower risk of early death than pessimists.
• A particular age doesn’t need to define you. I recently saw a news story of a 97-year old woman who ran a marathon! It's up to you to define the age you feel.
• Don’t let vanity get in the way of enjoying life. Yes, our faces and bodies age. Hopefully, with grace. Think about some of the most beautiful, mature women you hear about or personally know. You will find that those women who are fully engaged in living and have a joie de vivre appear to be younger.
• Do people enjoy being with you and around you? Chances are, if asked, they may use the word “beautiful” to describe you.

A while ago, I saw a friend of mine after almost 35 years. I couldn’t believe how age had depleted her! I asked my husband after the encounter if I really looked that old, but just didn’t know it? He assured me that I don’t. 

I would hope that my husband’s eyes age along with me, and that he always sees me as beautiful. As that old song says, “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.”

Oh, and about those smug teenage girls, they need to know this quote from the ageless Audrey Hepburn: “And the beauty of a woman, with passing years only grows!”

If you enjoyed this article, please pass it on to your friends who are Wise Women of Age.

Life Lessons - Lost and Found, Do's and Don'ts

I just finished reading Wild-From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl  Strayed. I know this book is now a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, and yes, I could have just watched the movie, but I’m one of those people that think you really need to know the “details” that are sometimes skipped when a book goes to film. The story begins with the quick and early death of Cheryl’s mother from lung cancer at the age of 45, sending Cheryl’s own mental and moral well-being into a tailspin. 

The Amazon book description nutshells the story with the following synopsis of the book:  “At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.”

Since I’ve devoted two paragraphs, you may get the impression that I liked this book. You would be correct. In fact it is one of Huffington Post's 21 Books from The Last 5 Years That Every Woman Should Read. I really do agree.

Grandma, Me, and Jesus in 3-D

Sallman's Head of Christ

Grandma lived about three hours away from us, back in the days before interstates could whisk us wherever we needed to go. The three-hour drive consisted of maneuvering over two-lane country roads, so our visits were mostly limited to special occasions like Christmas and Mother's Day. 

One of those special occasions was the first two weeks of June when my parents would deposit me at Grandma's for a vacation. I was never quite sure whose vacation it was supposed to be, but it must have been mine, because during those two weeks, I attended VACATION Bible School at Grandma's church. 

In the 1950's, Bible School wasn't the creative, fun learning environment it is today. Discipline was the rule, and spending half a day for two weeks sitting on thickly varnished wooden chairs (that tended to get tacky with summer's high humidity) didn't seem like much of a vacation to me. 

The Sewing Machine

On a recent afternoon, I opened up my sewing machine to repair my husband’s jeans. I noticed immediately that the stitching didn’t look right. Pulling out my well-worn instruction manual for the Model 1351 Zigzag Sewing Machine, I flipped through the pages to find the trouble-shooting guide. There, on the memo page, were the measurements of my daughters, my son, my sister, and me. The writing is the recognizable script of my mother, recording our sizes as they were the last time she held this manual in her hands in 1980.

Like a freeze-frame from a movie, I remembered the sight of my mother hunched low over her sewing machine as she deftly maneuvering fabrics under the needle, generating clothing for my sister and me.

For all of my childhood, my mother owned a sewing machine. Her first was a Christmas present from my dad. Purchased in the 1950’s, it was made of steel and finished in bright blue with chrome trim. It folded down neatly into a mahogany cabinet with Chippendale-style pull on the front door. Since our ranch-style home had no rooms to spare for only sewing, her sewing machine substituted as decorative surface in our living room usually with a lamp or flower arrangement of seasonal kind on top of its closed lid. 

I don’t recall Mom ever telling me who taught her to sew. Her mother died when she was very young. Her father abandoned her and her two younger brothers. Their grandmother raised them. Mom grew up industrial strength. As poor farmers deep in the south, they struggled for day to day existence. Perhaps my great-grandmother shared her skills with her skinny little granddaughter. I am confident my mother learned more from necessity than for the sake of a hobby.

Love Is Like a See-Saw

I saw this “cartoon” on Facebook recently. I don’t know where it originally came from, so I can’t give proper credit to the humorist who developed it, but it reminded me of something that happened about 25 years ago. 

My husband and I had just married about two years before this occasion. I certainly didn’t consider myself a newlywed because I’d weathered marital difficulties previously in what I call “my former life,” but it was in something I will never forget.

I worked for a small family-run business. It reminded me of the Ewing family from the old Dallas series. The patriarch had passed away, leaving the matriarch to preside over her three squabbling sons who consistently jockeyed for priority, attention, and authority within the business. Only three of us in the office were not related to the family: the accountant, the receptionist, and me. At least that was the situation at the beginning of this story.

The receptionist was a gorgeous red-haired young woman. I’ll call her Diana (names have been changed to protect the innocent). She was a living doll, but unfortunately not one of the brightest bulbs in the box, as some people say. I quietly marveled each day that she managed to accomplish the simplest tasks. Nevertheless, she was beautiful! That beauty caught the eye of most men who came to the office, but particularly one of the grandsons, heretofore referred to us Rob. He immediately began pursuit. 

It didn’t take much to woo her. He was rich. She was not. She dazzled with her beauty, he dazzled with his wealth. It wasn’t long until they were married. Unlike most newlyweds of the era, they were immediately able to move into a big farmhouse purchased by the family for the freshly-minted couple.

Over lunch on the first day of Diana’s return to work after the honeymoon, she shared with me that the evening before she had prepared everything for Rob’s morning. She pressed his shirt, set out his shoes with appropriately coordinating socks tucked into them, and laid out his wardrobe for the day. She was up at dawn, dressed, and put on full make-up and hair for herself. In his bathroom, she set his toiletries out, conveniently arranged for his convenience, including the dispensing of the appropriate dollop of toothpaste on his toothbrush (lest he have to do it for himself). Then she went downstairs and prepared a massive breakfast for him.

There is Energy in Silence

March has been a month of restoration for me. I have openly admitted in one of my previous blogs that I believe I suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t know, but this winter has been particularly brutal in snow and sub-zero temperatures. Here in western Pennsylvania, we didn’t get it as bad as the east coast, but it wasn’t easy.

I desperately needed the mid-winter break that my husband and I took to sunny Florida in the beautiful city of St. Augustine. We went with friends, so that made the break even better. Dining out, walking the beach, collecting shells, bottles of wine.

I don’t live a particularly stressful life. I no longer work in a paid position, but I am an active volunteer and working toward writing a book. Those who know me well will testify I am a woman of action. Getting things checked off a list is my general modus operandi. Before one task is completed, my brain is fast-forwarding to the next project or event. 

Because of this dark winter, I felt my creativity dropping off, patience thinning more quickly than usual and diminishing energy. I know I wasn’t operating on all mental and physical cylinders. My soul needed that break. My brain needed that break. I just needed that break. 

Regrets, I’ve Had a Few…

I recently read an article in the Huffington Post titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware, a writer from Australia who spent several years caring for dying people in their homes. She has recently released a full-length book titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying - A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing. The book tells her story, and how her life transformed through the regrets of the dying people for which she cared.

Here are the Top Five on Bronnie’s list:

1.       I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2.       I wish I didn't work so hard.

3.       I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4.       I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5.       I wish that I had let myself be happier. 

When I did the personal interviews after the Boomer Babes Lifestyle Survey that I authored, I asked each woman to share her greatest regret. Right off the bat, 17% of the participants claimed that when looking back at their lives, they had no regrets, and if they did, they were small ones. 

When cataloging the response of the others interviewed, I found they fell into several categories of distinction, ironically there were 5 general categories here as well.

1.       Regrets regarding family issues (25%)

2.       Marriage/relationship issues (25%)

3.       More/continued education (21%)

4.       I wish I’d been more assertive (8%)

5.       I wish I’d been true to myself (4%)

Family issues were many. The question of regrets brought painful memories, and tears flowed during these conversations.

Bonnie grew up in a fractured family. Her stepfather was abusive, and she left home at the age of 15. She admits that she spent much of her life being bitter, and brought that bitterness and anger into her own marriage. As she and the marriage matured, her husband helped her to realize that it doesn’t pay to be resentful. His steadfast love and support of her helped make her the woman she is today.

Martha was a divorced, single mother of a boy. She felt she could have been a better mother, but spent too much time trying to focus on her own life, not her son’s.  

Rose’s son was on a self-destructive path, but she had no way to stop the events of his life, one that he eventually lost. 

Some were simpler, but no less hurtful. Nola regretted that she didn’t get close to her mother earlier in life.
Paula said she didn’t tell her father “I love you” the last time she saw him. 

Marital issues ran the gambit as well. Marrying too young is a regret several women expressed. 

Vera felt she was too young when she married, and didn’t think she was mature enough to be a good wife and mother. Although Loretta has been in a long-running marriage, she also admits marrying too young. She wishes she had more single years prior to her commitment.

Poor choice of partner was a common theme as well, from regret of choice, to not escaping from a bad marriage soon enough. 

Continuing Education - This regret ranked high also. For some it was because opportunity for continuing education wasn’t available. For others, they had started college but either didn’t finish or didn’t pursue higher degrees.

Assertiveness (or lack of it) - Sandy has been divorced many more years than she was married, and learned to become assertive to make her way in life. She regrets that she was not assertive early in her marriage. She tried valiantly to live up to the standard of the time and defer to her husband. However, deferring led to her husband walking all over her; in turn, she lost his respect and respect for herself. 

Lynn’s husband lost his job in the early years of their marriage. She regrets she wasn’t more assertive in getting him motivated. She points to that negative time in their life for causing problems they are living with now. 

Do you see yourself in these regrets? I read this quote recently by Sydney J. Harris, an American journalist: “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

I also regret that I learned to be assertive later in life. My mother was a tough cookie, but she never encouraged me to be. Perhaps I absorbed some of my mother’s strength by osmosis. I just wish I had found it in me earlier in my life. 

Indeed, I saw some of myself in each woman’s responses. I have regrets over marriage choices and how I handled marriage. I have regrets over past mistakes that cause family issues in the present. I regret that I didn’t put education ahead of me as a priority.

Many nights I spent staring at the ceiling, replaying life, woulda/coulda/shoulda, beating myself up for what I did or didn’t do. Then one day, there was a family crisis, a “kerfuffle,” as Judge Judy would say. Past offenses and slights flew like arrows. Usually in those situations, I groveled and begged forgiveness for my egregious life errors. Placating, apologizing, and soothing others was my standing operating procedure. For whatever reason, however, something “clicked” that day.  I made the decision that I was done apologizing and regretting. I would forgive myself. If the other person couldn't forgive me, then it was no longer my problem. 

Taaa Daaaa! You could almost hear the angels heralding. A weight lifted off my shoulders that I didn’t even realize was so heavy. I breathed a sigh of relief. My new theory is this: If I offend/upset/slight or anger you today, I will try to make it right. However, what occurred 10 or 20 years ago is over. There is no fixing it now. We can only move forward. 

Regrets? Yes, I have had a few, but we can’t go back. So, as they say in that Disney song that’s been on everyone’s lips this year,” Let it go! Let it go!” Don’t let your greatest regret in life be that you spent your life reliving your mistakes.

If you need some help dealing with your life’s regrets, you may want to check out Your Year for Change: 52 Reflections for Regret-Free Living also by Bronnie Ware.