I stand before the mirror; it's rather plain, no gilding or fancy frame like the fairy tale. No magic entity appears, no portal to a beautiful step daughter. Instead a fifty one year old woman stares back. She blinks. She turns her head from side to side. She moves in close. She retreats. She sighs.
"I look my age" I say dejectedly to the mirror. Mirror woman sighs in response.
Why is this such a failure? Why has it come to this clinging to youth? Why is looking the age my body has lived perceived as a fault? And what a small window this age reflection requests. Definitely can't look over your age. So, the best you hope for is a few years younger. I am fifty one. Can I really expect to look forty? Forty five? Forty seven?
And as we all strive and cling to the glimmer of youth, are we not just resetting the bar higher and higher with each passing decade? Just by dental hygiene advances alone, we look much younger than our equal aged grandparents, many of whom had dentures. Not to mention the advances in skin care and hair restoration. We are younger than ever before at age fifty one.
NO! we are STILL FIFTY ONE. Not younger...just packaged to look fresher from the outside. Like adding blood to aged meat at the butcher counter to give it a fresh red appearance, we equally deceive our eyes and tell our souls lies. Yet, no matter the exterior, we remain our age. Is that what is so frightening? That we are in fact aging?
We buy organic foods, demand natural ingredients, but disallow ourselves the natural process of aging. It isn't a disease, it is a process. Would we tell the autumn leaves not to color? Not to fall? Isn't there beauty in those crinkly orange leaves?
The mirror woman stares back at me then breaks into a smile.
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