Helping Women Live Longer, Healthier, Happier Lives! |
I was born on September 11th, a date that up until 6 years ago was completely unremarkable – historically speaking. That is unless you consider Kristi McNichol’s birthday a historical event. But up until 2001 that was about all you could find on 9/11. I’d looked forward to my birthdays all year long. Yeah, I know all kids do. But mine was summer’s official last hurrah for me and my friends. I’d always have a big slumber party (which never included much actual “slumber”). About 10 giggly girls lying in sleeping bags on the floor of the playroom in our finished basement, talking about what boys we thought were cute (or “gross”), making prank phone calls (often to said boys…this was back before caller ID), telling ghost stories trying to scare the wits out of one another, playing with Ouija boards and trying to levitate one another, generally getting rambunctious, having laughing fits that momentarily stopped breathing, moaning from having stomach aches from eating way too much junk food and drinking way too much soda. Also, we had a pool in the backyard when I was growing up, so that was a big deal at the party, too…being up way past our bedtimes, all of us swimming at midnight with the pool lights on. Our lips blue, teeth chattering, goosebumpy, doing cannonballs back into the heated water as quickly as we could so that the fall cold (or lingering summer mosquitoes) didn’t get us. So, I have a lot of happy memories of my birthdays (and Septembers, in general)…which is why it kind of caught me off guard when this year for this first time in my life… I found myself a little depressed on my birthday. I turned 43 this year and it just didn’t feel the same as other years. For whatever reason, I was really excited about turning 40. I invited a bunch of friends over for dinner to celebrate. We barbecued, drank too much, ate chocolate cake and it was really wonderful! But for some reason turning 43 didn’t sit well with me. It’s as if I realized that I wasn’t just visiting my 40’s -- I was actually going to travel right on through them. And while 40 sounded kinda cool… 43, sounded…well… kinda….old. I don’t know what it is about that particular number that got to me. Because generally I feel pretty good about the way I look. I definitely don’t think I “look”my age – but on the other hand, nobody’s going to mistake me for a 26 year old, either. So suppose on some level, there is that nagging sense that I’m a carton of milk or something, just waiting for things to start to turn “sour”, occasionally sniffing the top of the container to see if anything smells funny. The whole thing got me thinking about a party that I went to many years ago at my Uncle Jack’s house. Now, Uncle Jack was an iconic figure in my Dad’s early life, but I never really got to know him very well. He lived in Potomac, Maryland with his family and we didn’t get there all that often. I think I might have seen him twenty or so times in my entire life, so it’s weird that I have this strong memory of this. But anyway, at this party, seemingly out of the blue he came over to me and said to me in his Southern drawl, “My Lawd, Geralyn, you’ve really grown into quite a beautiful, young woman…” I smiled, flattered by the compliment -- and then he looked directly into my eyes and followed with something I didn’t see coming, “just make sure that’s not ALL you are”. That really floored me, because I had never thought about it before – but in that instant, I understood what he meant completely. That old phrase “beauty fades” popped into my head. And I thought of how tough it must be for those incredibly heart-stoppingly beautiful women, like Audrey Hepburn or Bridget Bardot, women who are that gorgeous and are so celebrated for their appearance to lose that identity from the inevitable passage of time. He was reminding me of something that I knew instinctively on some level -- that women need to be more than just their appearance. Because eventually whether you like it or not -- at one speed or another, how you look is going to shift fundamentally. At 23 you can be beautiful, at 63 you’re great-looking “for a woman that age”. Which means that at some point you’d better pin your identity on something less transient. There is nothing sadder to me than to see a woman who’s had about four too many plastic surgeries, thinking that she’s fooling anyone. Like somebody who refuses to leave the party, long after it was time to go. Incidentally, I think both Audrey Hepburn and Bridget Bardot did an amazing job a making that kind of shift. Audrey Hepburn became a name and face synonymous with improving the lives of children living in poverty for Unicef and Bridget Bardot turned that breath-taking visage into the symbol of the humane treatment of animals. But anyway, I found myself revving up for an all-out pity party on my 43rd. I was getting older and I decided that it really sucked! I tried hard all day to go with my funk and wallow in it, but ultimately I wasn’t successful. It’s
hard to keep moping around when all day long you are getting phone
calls, emails, flowers, text messages and cards from people from all
corners of the globe letting you know that they are thinking of you,
that they are grateful that you are in their lives – that they love you. It’s
hard (and believe me I tried!) to completely bum out about what you are
slowly losing with the passage of time, when each year you have more
and more wonderful people come into your life …more and more happy
memories to add to your mental scrapbook. So by
the end of the day, I found myself profoundly grateful for my life as I
closed my eyes to blow out those oversized 4 and 3 candles on my cake.
|
