ON AGEING
I

I saw my neck today, in a Macy's mirror. I wanted to run away, but I didn't run. Instead, I turned down the edges of my black turtle neck and moved in closer, closer.  I don't have a full length mirror at my house and it's hard for me to see all of me.  All I see is corners, circles, strips.  At Macy's, I saw it all. All of me, why not take all of me?  Can't you see, I'm no good, without.......well, we'll finish the song right there.

I saw my neck. 

It was a wondrous sight, my neck.  My skin, my dear, dear, skin - - went in and it came out.  It had its own say, apparently, about where it would and would not go.  Somewhere along the line a ballot showed up at my house  that I forgot to sign.  I did not sign this ballot that read, "Let go of the neck! She does not care anymore!" Truth is, I do very much care, I just didn't vote in that election.
 Damn. Double damn. And here I am, out there, on the streets, in the restaurants, at the local events, and the public thinks I simply didn't vote.
 Well, I meant to.
 So there.

Because my husband was twelve years older than me, I had always been "the youngest one".  It came with the territory.  I got away (or hoped I did) with all kinds of transgressions: not being a great cook, not being as well organized, not being as serious, not caring so much as......and on and on....as the rest of them, our friends, all of them, who were Jim's age.  I slid.  I was "the kid".  I was holding down a job, going to school, reading tons of books, directing plays,  writing and publishing....but I wasn't, somehow, a "full-fledged adult" - -not like them. I didn't have to be. Oh yes, I did plenty of stuff, but..... I also got away with my stuff. I was both admired and disapproved of for this existential "space" I took up. Not that other friends, older friends, didn't also dare take up this kind of space with me. In our circle. We knew who we were. We still know who we are. It's a matter of charisma. Charm. Childishness.
 We have, all of us, ridden ourselves of these vainglorious  traits, but it has taken us a mighty long time.
 Meanwhile, we are certain to have these necks.    
       
Susan, one of my dearest friends, looked down at her hands this past Monday and said, "Well, I don't care about my hands, because who does care about hands, really?  I don't want to do anything to point attention to my hands.  So I have decided to focus on my eyes."  Susan, at age 67, has discovered eyelash extentions.  I must say, they are most fetching.  Another female friend advises me to go get Botoxed.  "It's a cosmetic," she says, in her excited voice," nothing more, nothing less. It's a cosmetic, except that it hurts."
 "But I already hurt," I said, "How much more do I have to hurt to look good?"  My friend looked at me like I was just so dumb.

"You already look good," she said.  "But to look better, you have to hurt. That's what we pay for.  
Come on, Kay.  Get with the program.  Looking good isn't good enough!"
'It isn't?"
"Oh, God, No!"
""Oh."

So aging isn't just surrendering to our ideas of what our Grandmothers were like.....it's trying to keep that flame of what our Grandmothers were like inside a face and body that looks thirty years younger than the face and body of the face and body of what our Grandmothers'  walked around in.  I can't even imagine my Grandmother looking like me - - and she died at 63, five years younger than me. Would my Grandmother have been getting advice about her eyebrows? The plasticity of her skin?  The plasticity of her vagina? 
 Wouldn't she have run like hell-fire down the lane past the well-house, past where we were all sure the dread White Lady lived, past the Clear Creek with it's salmon and it's secret rocks?
 We are in a new land, now, Cousins, we need Protection and we need to Protect each other.  There is nobody else older than us, than us.

My mother has been dead since I was twenty-five, so she's not much help. Mostly, I turn to my older friends, my friends in their eighties, like Mel, who is eighty-six. What's she up to? I want to model myself like Mel. That girl I see in my office every Wednesday at five, she's cute, but she's twenty.  There's a lot of boat adjusting and moving that boat in a new direction between her years and my years. 
There's a lot of neck action I'm a'gonna' have to surrender to, in the meanwhile.

So That's it from me, from the colored condo where it's never too late to figure how to live.