Is My Nose Broadening?

The protagonist in a certain play laments that she's getting noticeably older. "My nose is broadening!", she cries out in despair.
Apparently, Florence Nightingale, in her 80's, was almost unrecognizable as the woman who had gone to the Crimea. 'Her nose had broadened' writes one of her biographers.

 

 Has mine? I quite liked my young nose, and still do. As a matter of fact, my mother's nose has thinned out a tiny bit and I would never have described my Father's as 'broad'. Not as aquiline as it used to be..... It is what it is, and if I really don't like it, there's always rhinoplasty. Graceful doesn't need to mean natural!
It's interesting how people's faces change. Some of us look so much better in middle age than childhood. It's also wonderful to see so many well-postured people. Terribly stooped and even 'hunch-backed' old people were such a common sight in my youth; that has all but disappeared. I fear though, that the next generation will be round shouldered. Too much time spent hunched over a desk or a devise! Straighten up, you young things; take a lesson from your grandparents and throw those shoulders back!
We need to read more, to become more aware of just how lucky most of us are to have been born in the now and not the then.
In 1850, you had to live with your nose.  
 

My Sister

My sister's birthday is today; she has grey hair under her Clairol. She is a grandmother.
Somehow that is just not possible.
There used to be a little girl with very long blonde braids living in my house.  She has been replaced by a tall, chic shorthaired woman.
As children we were never friends; our real connection began about 30 years ago and it is mainly by telephone that we maintain and strengthen our relationship. We live too far apart to be a part of each other's kitchens and back yards, so we can ignore our own maturing children and rapidly growing grandchildren if we want to. They are not always a part of the conversation.
We share an aging mother; we have just buried a very old father. We share some interests and are wildly aghast at some of the other things one of us enjoys. Dogs and poutine. Yes and no.
Winter walks and cats. No and yes.
The voice on the telephone is strong and youthful; will it always sound like this? Will my desire to have, always, a younger sister keep her 'forever young'?   Fear says that something will get us.  "Don't paint the devil on the wall." our mother says. We have good genes, we eat well, we neither smoke nor drink, we have good genes, we have good genes.....
Optimism say we will become two old ladies travelling to Santiago de Compostela and if that doesn't work, Winnipeg.
Happy birthday, dear sister, and truly many, many more.

Graceful but not Natural

Graceful is certainly not the same as natural. Otherwise, why would I be so happy to receive my Yves Rocher brochures?
Emulating older people, wanting to look older came to an abrupt end after the First World War, 1918.  Youth was so disillusioned with the behaviour of its parents that the parents were no longer the shining example of bygone years.
It was the first time in all of history that older women tried to look younger.
(Sometimes this has disastrous results; witness the mini skirt.)
I don't know that I really want to look younger...I just want to look not so much older! LOL That is truly getting my verbal knickers in a knot.
There is such a thing as age appropriate; yes, I agree. Teenager clothing on the middle aged body is just wrong but wearing ones wrinkles proudly? I'm not comfortable with that yet. Considering the amount of money spent on cosmetics by both sexes, most of us aren't.
This could be another theme: the sin of vanity. When does vanity stop being harmless and become sinful? Mothers sending their daughters for Botox? Is that a lesser sin or a greater one than parents contributing to teenage obesity? Are they perhaps equal?
We're going to go where politically correct people fear to tread and talk about sin on this blog. Not all the time of course; that would be boring.  But more often than never.

Define your terms



Gracious: polite, kind, pleasant, elegant in a way associated with the upper classes or wealth, showing God's grace.

Graceless: lacking grace, elegance or charm.

Thank you to the Oxford English Dictionary for this bit of wisdom.

Two things here....The OED has a web site all about dictionaries; the when  and who www.oed.com and it is surprisingly interestingly good reading. The other is that my dictionary was a freebie from The Folio Society www.foliosociety.com. The Folio Society is my second great love , after dishes, but I may have to give it up as it is not a cheap hobby!

I'm hoping that the graceless world is a product of fear mongers and movie producers and that I'm proven wrong on my "aging journey". In the end, I may have grown old gracefully in a grace-filled world.

I'm not waiting any longer!

I've decided to plunge in....not wait for any more 'Aha moments'. After all, I'm running out of time; what doesn't get done in the next few years is never going to get done. The retirement seminar co-ordinator just plunged right in, too. She gave no quarter, just told it like it is. "You people," she said, "Have far less time than you think." Let me just say that that was a defining moment for my husband. He went out and bought a motor home. I just sat there, still waiting to be moved by whatever spirit moved Grandma Moses.
I am a sixty something (it'll all come out one day, but on a need-to-know basis)
homemaker, in-my deep-soul writer of deep and profound literature but so undisciplined that I don't even scrapbook because it takes too long, and just a little bit regretful that it is so.
This is my attempt to reach out and perhaps? start a little dialogue about our pre-old people lives; how it will play out compared to our hopes and dreams; how it has played out so far.
We're 60+ now; our lives are stained and scarred; there are bad decisions and stupid moves behind us all. Have we learned anything? Will we be nicer than some old people we know? Are we as nice as we can be?