I don’t remember exactly when the denial—or, if you like, the cheating—began. Was it as early as in my 40s, when I started dyeing my hair? Or as late as in my 60s, when I invested in my first body shaper?
Anyway, I think it was in my 50s that I began positively misrepresenting myself: I chose to assume a favorite cover among first-time grandmas, whose ranks I had just joined—I chose to be called “Mamita.” I doubt that I fooled anyone, but surely, for some reason, I felt better.
I remember how my dad felt unnerved himself when strangers who used to call him “Tatang” started calling him “Lolo.” Until then, he hadn’t noticed he had passed into terminal grandfatherhood.
Now, you can see why I couldn’t imagine myself answering to “Lola.”
Besides, my own mom was herself holding out. She was Mama Lita to all her grandchildren. And by the same token, my friend Bea’s mom was Mama Sony.
Cousin Ninit’s mom was our clan’s first Mamita, and, by fond association, I chose to be called Mamita, too.
Some have coined aliases around their names. Susie, another friend, is Momsie, and Bea is Mama Bea. Ninit is disingenuously inventive: “I’m Grandma-Tita-Ninit, Tita Ninit for short.” All the same, her grandchildren call her “Gramma.”
But at 70, what’s in a name? I’m left with few tricks, indeed, for masking aging. Believe me, I’ve gone through the expense with little accomplishment to show for it.
I think it’s time for “honest aging”—I found the phrase in a poem in the book “Love After 70,” given to me as a birthday gift by my friend Lorna, who has a special feel for the right book to give to the right celebrator.
“Love After 70” certainly offers a heartwarming welcome to the milestone, and provides insights into the relationships carried down that road.
Before anybody cringes, let me repeat what Jane Fonda, who’s exactly my age and looked incredibly sexy at the Oscars, had to say about being in the 70s age range: “It’s the new 40s!”
I’m hardly a Jane Fonda—the exercise girl of the ’60s, the Barbarella of the ’70s—and feeling 40 is a bit of a stretch for me. A definite line separates life before and now; it presents a new perspective. Now, I have to take care of myself.
Tiny needles
My day begins when I’m awakened not by the chirping of birds, but by the frantic pulsation of tiny needles in the arm I had slept on. That and some dull morning aches have me doing, for relief, some yoga stretches on the bed.
After that, I’m on my feet, and Vergel reclaims the sleeping territory he has lost to me during the night.
No wonder when I routinely asked Dad how he felt, he replied, giggling with a good-natured sense of acceptance: “I don’t remember feeling good, kiddo. There’s always something here or there, and sometimes I don’t even know where, but it’s there.”
I just love his attitude about aging. “If anyone doubts God had any sense of humor,” he’d say, “aging most definitely proves it.” That’s why, whenever I caught him giggling by himself, I no longer wondered—he was enjoying another private joke between him and God.
As for me, apart from yoga and humor, I now have a reinforcing recipe against morning aches, courtesy of my friend Dr. Rita: Knox unflavored gelatin in warm water. I can’t wait to try it.
But nothing cures the pain of having to part with clothes I love to wear but no longer fit in. Out, too, are those stiletto-heeled shoes, now not only outgrown but unsafe. And bye-bye to nighties that have outlived their usefulness because they have to be worn under a robe for the risk of pneumonia.
But, don’t get me wrong, the Public Me isn’t yet giving up on looking good. Not that we always succeed to any extent, but, God, I try, as do all my peers. Bea, a daily jogger to Mass, says she can’t suppress irreverent giggles at the sight of women’s bald spots—Ninit calls them “manholes”—visible from the back of the chapel, where she chooses to seat herself for her own good.
It takes one to spot one. Reminded of Bea’s input, we now check ourselves in the mirror, front, back, sides and top.
At this age, when honesty feels forced on us, we demand no less of others. A few actually seem quite relieved to be able to unburden themselves of, say, their not-too-secret wig. One confessed wearer looked surprised and pleased friends still had to ask.
But with cosmetic surgery, which is even more obvious than wigs, women are not so forthcoming. But maybe we should leave that for last, for our 80s, if anyone yet gives a hoot.
Here, by the way, is a stanza from the poem about septuagenarian romance, as honest as it gets—“Aspect of Aging,” by Maureen Tolman Flannery:
We can be each other’s mirror
in the faithfulness of honest aging,
not to recoil from smile lines
creased into our present presentation
as the folds of an old love note.
P.S. A remembrance of something I passed un-ascribed: The three lines that began my column last week, “Senior moment to moment,” were from a poem in, again, the collection “Love After 70—Senior Moment” by Carl Palmer.