Identity

Chasing Youth


A recent headline story at MSNBC that discussed the downside of plastic surgery and other medical beauty enhancers and age “restoratives” got me thinking, yet again, about the fact that I am approaching fifty.  There is a great line in the film When Harry Met Sally about turning forty when the Sally character wails to Harry that she is going to be forty soon and when he reminds her that this “soon” is still eight years off she replies, “But its out there.”  And I think probably every woman understood what she meant. Old looms for women in a way that it doesn’t for men.  And it’s not that men aren’t judged physically – they are – but more in terms of weight and fitness than for getting older with its requisite wrinkles and hair loss. Women are condemned for it all. The loss of skin tone. The weight gain. The wrinkles. The graying hair. Mainly just for the fact that we can’t stay twenty. Although seriously, who wants to stay twenty?  Aside from the youthful appearance and stamina, there is the larger issue of the lack of common sense and wisdom that only life and experience can bring.  Speaking for myself only, I would not trade who I am and what I know to be the twenty year old girl I was again.

Still women, many of them, will try just about anything within their budgeted grasp (and a few beyond) to keep the obvious signs of age at bay. The trouble is that anymore these methods of age eradication are too easy for the average person to spot which leaves them not marveling at the woman’s youthful appearance but trying to guess just how old she really is.

Botox is a curious thing. It’s poison really, but it is used to paralyze facial muscles which has the effect of smoothing wrinkles. The dangers were supposedly minimal but the most recent studies have found that contrary to what doctors who use botox have told patients, the toxin can and does cross the brain’s blood barrier.  So in addition to a smooth, expressionless face, a person is also exposing brain tissue to a deadly toxin.  Who knew?  Well not the people who touted Botox as some miraculous fountain of faux youth, and they really should have.  Known that is.  It’s not as though patients need to be wrinkle free to make it through a day as opposed to say migraine sufferers who also receive injections of Botox as a form of preventative treatment.  If a person were to weigh the benefits against the risk, which group of people are taking the bigger chance?

We women bear some of the responsibility for this obsession.  We willingly support industries which hack none to subtly at our self-images.  We buy the magazines, the cosmetics and the hair dye. We diet or jump on every exercise bandwagon to roll by or swallow dubious pills that tout even more dubious results. I don’t know that we can be entirely blamed though.  Would we know that we should be unhappy with aging if the end result – being marginalized – were not so evident in our culture?

I admit I highlight my hair to hide the loss of pigment (I can’t call it graying because the strands are snow-white), but I haven’t succumbed to a full on dye because I know I am too lazy to maintain something like that.  And I exercise but this stems back to my fat pre adult teen years when I was “such a pretty face”. The trauma lingers. I also have a pretty strict diet though this owes nearly entirely to my food allergies and loss of gallbladder than a love of self-deprivation.  So am I part of the the problem? Fifty looms – five and a half years – and I can’t say that the idea is welcome or repugnant at this point. I really don’t know what I will look like by then though I am sure that my husband will still find my bum luscious though I doubt that I will be attracting any whistles from the population at large (though interestingly I did get a whistle while running last week at the gym – not bad for forty-four.)

Youth is best left to the young. The rest of us might be better off redefining what beauty looks like at 40 or 50 and beyond rather than letting the standards be set for us. Or better yet, we might try focusing on things that are real aging issues like maintaining our health and our minds.

The Journey of My Soul


I met Susan at the bed and breakfast she runs with her husband while Rob and I were on our recent honeymoon trip to the States. She is hoping to retire to soon to Montana. Her favorite place in the world is the area around Boseman. As I listened to her talking, I wondered what it would be like to be attached to a spot/location as she was. Rob’s spot is a bit less fixed, but he yearns for the mountains and the solitude that lets him recharge his inner reserves. Many of my relatives on my mother’s side seem to have an affinity for Arizona around Mesa. My late husband Will loved the Boy Scout camp in New Mexico where he spent his teenage summers, hiking and camping. My daughter’s favorite spot right now is my parent’s home where she can run in and out freely and play with neighbor children. I haven’t any place where I feel affinity or miss when I am away. My home perhaps but I have lived in many apartments and houses over the course of my life. Wherever I was living was my base, but I didn’t miss the structures terribly when I moved on. I have a fondness for my first real house. The one I bought myself, where eventually Will and I lived for a time, but I don’t long for it. I love our house now, but I could move to another location and be just as happy. My blog friend Tanja wrote a piece about leaving her home in the U.S. for her home country of the Netherlands and how difficult it was seeming, and while I intellectually get what she is talking about, I didn’t feel any great loss for the house or the Des Moines area. A few people there truly matter but house is just wood and cement and probably a whole lot of PVC materials.

 

I wonder if this makes me odd? So many people have places they cannot leave. On Easter Sunday I listened to my sister, aunt and brother-in-law discuss a situation involving a cousin and his wife. His company is pulling up stakes and relocating in Mexico. They offered him a position and practically speaking he can’t really turn it down with only 6 years to full retirement and the economy being what it is. She won’t move. She has lived her whole life in the small Wisconsin area that most of her and my cousin’s family has called home for generations. Even for six years. Even when financial security for their not so far away old age is at stake. She refuses to think about. My brother-in-law saw merit in her choice. Snapped at me for suggesting she should “suck it up” as six years in not much time in the grand scheme. But my brother-in-law is also of the vein of those who cannot leave their roots.

 

I left home at 18 for college and never came back but for visits. I felt the initial homesickness of someone that age, but honestly preferred what I found away from my hometown. When the time came to decide where the relationship Rob and I had was heading, I knew that it was with him and in Canada. Relocating outside the U.S. was disorienting for a bit but ultimately there was never a question of not doing it. And though I feel more at home in Canada than I have anywhere in my life, that is Rob and not the geology.

 

Perhaps I find my place with the people I am most connected to? If so, I have scarcely ever been connected. Will and now Rob. My daughter. My niece Julie who I have seen since a family adopted her at age two and taken far away and out of my life. Which brings me to my journey. I have felt for most of my life that I was in a holding pattern, waiting. And while I waited I was there for someone else. My mother as she struggled with her marriage to an alcoholic. Certain friends along the way where my primary job was to listen. Teaching was certainly about others because as good as I was and as fulfilling that it could be at times, there was always a sense that I had another and more personal calling. My life with Will was about him. Being his happily ever after. Protecting him. Ensuring that he wouldn’t suffer at the end of his life. Katy, I think, was sent to help me – give me purpose and comfort in her own little girl way. She was told me that she chose me to be her mother twice, once before and now.

 

Rob is a reconnection. I feel home in him and a sense of union that seems to have been lacking in my life since before I could name it. What our twining of paths means is yet to be fully discovered and the place that will be most significant in our journey is still to be found. Will that place be THE place? The house I will long for when I am away from it? I don’t know. I think I am a people person, which is ironic given the dearth of people to whom I am close and even interact with beyond the most superficial of levels. Rob and I are the same in that way. We really have no friends. Well, I have a couple but he has no real friends – he tells me this often. In the Journey of Souls, it talks about younger souls needing to be greeted after death by many of the souls they were closest to in their lives – current and past because it helped ease the initial shock. Older and more advanced souls had fewer and eventually no one to great them. Does this carry over into our mortal time? The numbers of fellow travelers is in proportion to where we are on our soul journey? Maybe we lose our sense of location attachment. As we progress we begin to focus mainly on those who are important. People are more important than things be they possession or places.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going Back to Work or School


Lately I find myself looking at the job opportunities that I see listed in the local paper and The Globe and Mail. A pointless exercise because I am still waiting on my permanent residency application to be approved, but I do it anyway. There was a job at the local museum listed last week that sounded like fun. The director needed a temporary assistant to help coordinate school visits, plan activities and lead tours. A love of history and an education background were the two biggest requirements. Aside from the fact that the hours wouldn’t work for me until Katy is in school full-time, it sounded like a great job. Note that I did not say “career”. I am not interested in a career. I have one and that’s writing. Being a writer is where my heart and soul lies and I am not going to forget that again. However, I do miss the day to day that goes along with a “real” job sometimes and it would be nice to bring in a little extra cash to off-set expenses since we are talking again about building a house. And when I am not looking at want ads, I think about taking classes. I grabbed the Continuing Education Guide for MacEwan College today as I was leaving the Safeway. They have a professional writing degree program there that has a few classes that would help me out with my writing career – copyediting, magazine writing, creative non-fiction and web designing. Valuable skills all.

 

So why don’t I just work on my writing and not worry about getting a job or going back to school? Partly because I am in a rut again. I have a lot of work currently out and haven’t heard back on anything yet. While this is frustrating, the other side of the coin is my fear that by having work out I am breaking some sort of rule. I don’t think I am because no one is going to pay me money even if they do want to use my work. The magazines I have targeted tend to pay you in subscriptions or copies of the edition you are published in. It is one of those resume-building things that writers do. Trade pay for writing credits that you can use to get more serious publications, agents and publishers to take you seriously. And there is the fact that at ten months I am well over past the longest stint I have gone without working since I was 14 years old. One would think that after thirty years of working for someone else, being self-employed would be a nice change, but that just goes to show you how ingrained work ethic and self-sufficiency can be. I am a product of my generation – the Joneses (1954 -1964) not Boomers or GenXer’s, we are the stable middle that keeps those two groups from exploding on each other. I learned my lessons too well, as my generation is wont to do and know I feel a bit untethered. Not that I am not nearly always busy. I have much to do and the days fly by. But I miss beng around people who are not my family on a my regular basis than writing group or yoga class.

 

Despite my dilemma, teaching is not calling loudly in my ear. I should be able to obtain an Alberta license sometime this spring and knowing what I do about education, I could easily sub next year. I don’t find that as interesting however as working in a museum. Or maybe studying to become a yogini. Yes, there is a yoga studio that I am going to switch to that offers training and certification for yoga instruction. How cool would that be?

 

“So what do you do?”

 

“I’m a writer and I teach yoga.”

 

Or.

“I write primarily but I also work part-time at the local museum designing educational programs for elementary and secondary students.”

 

Yeah, substitute teacher just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

 

Of course there is also Rob’s dream of building green houses.

 

“I write and I maintain the website for my husband’s company. He designs and builds green homes.”

 

Maybe I just want to be trendy? Not like most SAHM who venture back into employment by getting their realtor’s license or open up dayhomes. I don’t want to be anymore of a cliché than I am – teacher turn writer. Though in my case, it has always been writer with teaching being my side tracking.

 

I think that both employment and school probably represent nothing more than my frustration. I am hemmed in by a child who isn’t in full day school yet, a lack of status that keeps me from trying out jobs or classes and the interminable waiting that goes along with submitting writing pieces. The last is just a matter of finding that elusive audience for the things I like to write.

 

Probably what I really need is just a vacation.