With Age Comes…

I have reached a point in my life when I am concerned about certain aspects of aging. From very early on in my life, I received comments about my maturity level; I appeared to the outside world to be older than my years. This was cool when I was 15 and thought to be older than my 22-year-old co-worker. It was even cooler at 17, 18 and 19 when I wasn’t carded at bars or restaurants or liquor stores. The only thing I lacked was life experience.
Now that I am mature in years and life experience, I no longer want to look/act/seem older than I really am. I in fact, to appear younger would be better. So I worry about things like wrinkles, and spend maybe too much money on over-the-counter face lotions to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. I was one of those unfortunate girls who could find gray hairs amongst the darker ones early in my twenties and often joked that I would have so many white hairs by the time I was 50 that I would be naturally blonde. I started playing with hair color cause it was fun, and at some point it became, well, necessary.
I’m not to 50 yet (despite what the AARP thinks with their stupid mailers and offers of free copies of their magazine), and have had to make the tough decision whether to continue to color to cover the encroaching gray, or let it all hang out and to hell with what the world thinks. I didn’t like the look, so I chose to go back to chemical additives and continue to be a brunette for a couple of more decades.
Many women and men of my generation, choose to follow in the steps of the younger generation who have made adorning the body with tattoos a mainstream hobby. I’m not there yet, but I do like some more adventurous piercing beyond the earlobes. So after seven years of hemming and hawing, I had my nostril pierced. I love it!
Now my hair color is from a bottle, and I am sporting an opal on my face, I’m feeling okay about my age. Hell, who has to go quietly? There’s no law, right? People these days live so much longer, so it naturally follows that what used to be considered middle age is still ramping up.
Then my son goes and decides to make me a grandmother.
My twenty-one-year old son and his twenty-year-old girlfriend are working (all too) quickly towards parenthood. They are due in mid-March. I’m not ready for this. I am delighted to have a baby in the family–I’m just not thrilled that he or she will call me Grandmother. Maybe Nana, or Grammy or Nona or Grandma Ginger, or Mamaw. Definitely not Granny or Nanny or Abuela. I have a friend whose response to the news was, “Are you even 40, yet?” God, I love this woman, she always knows exactly what to say. And the best part is–she was serious!
So I’ve said it. I’m going to be a Grandmother. I’m very glad that I decided to color my hair and get my nose pierced BEFORE I found out. Not because.
Maybe it’s time for a tattoo.