Living in Age 45

I am often mystified by the penchant that people - especially women - have for wigging out about aging. I have never been that way. I did not get upset over age 25 (I've seen this happen, over turning a whole 25 - that is nothing! You are still a baby at that age! But it happens. It happens to some at 30 but again, I couldn't figure this out if I tried. 35 seems to not generate too much notice, strangely - if you are going to have a canary at age 25 and 30, why leave out 35? Or is it denial, because now your friends are all joking about the Big 4-0 looming in sight.

When my mother was approaching 40 she was coming unglued. I never could figure it out. Her date of birth is 9 January 1941. She never did the weird anti-aging thing her mother did (subtracted two years from her birth certificate - big deal. If you want to hide your real age, take off five or ten years, not two) or what my father's mother did - she was "39 and holding" her whole life. I remember one time we had to go to the hospital to see my Pop-Pop and when the admissions nurse asked her for his DOB, she looked down at me and back at the nurse as if embarrassed. I told her it was okay, that I was onto their current ages. Unbelievable!

But the thing with my mother was never about lying about the number, it was (as far as I could see) her looks. I might understand that if she actually showed signs of aging, but even now, at age 72, she does not look old. She looks like something isn't write, but she has had a number of strokes and it shows. But the years do not - and never have.

Both of us have extremely oily skin.

That is it. That is the whole amazing secret. There is no product, no nip/tucking, no make up, no nothing that I need to appear as I do. I do not look my age. Almost everyone who guesses my age guesses it to be 35 - 37. That is nice and I like it fine. I don't bother with cosmetics, I don't use anything special on my skin, heck, I don't use facial soap to wash my face. It gets washed in the shower like everything else. I am far too practical and pragmatic to bother with all that. And since I don't have the more common dry skin that needs moisteriser and other such nonsense in the winter and a face that looks like a saddlebag that's been left out in the desert, I have zero wrinkles.

I cannot say that if I had dry or normal skin and had started to develop crows feet or mouth lines that I might not feel differently. I might. But... probably not. It just isn't a part of my personality. I never gave a thought to aging and I spend a couple of minutes to do something with my hair (the one thing I have an ego about - I do colour it. It doesn't bother me that it began turning grey at age 26, but after a few years it made me look frumpy, and I don't want to look frumpy. Now it is shocking to see how much is there, but funny, too. Like, where'd all that come from?! But colouring hair is not a big deal and hardly a secret. I've been up front about it all along and nowadays I go for it with the heavy burgundy color, clearly not a natural colour.

Either way, I find listening to people whine about their aging to be somewhat immature and thoughtless - would you rather get older or be dead? Them's the choices. It is nice to wish to look 25 until you drop dead at 90 but let's face it, how reasonable is that? It isn't. You just need to look at it as every day above ground is a good one.

But I have a second reason for feeling this way, one that trims the entire fountain of youth I seem to have. The biggie, though, is that I have muscular dystrophy. It won't kill me, but there are times it makes me wish it would. With this as a daily issue, aging is GREAT! It means another minute, another hour, another day, another week, month, year(s), I have kicked this thing's butt all over creation. What's aging chronologically to that? Fifty will be a celebration of my ability to be so insufferably stubborn that not only did I get to fifty, I got there happy!

Welcome to my world!