I’m about to turn 60. Most of my life I looked young for my age, but that has begun to change at a startling pace.
My family was vain. How we looked mattered, a lot. My parents were youthful even before there was such a thing as Botox and filler. They didn’t worry about wrinkles from laughing or smoking and did both with abandon, dressing up nearly every night to go out and always looking magnificent.
My mom, who didn’t consider herself a beauty, went to Kenneth’s, the same salon as Jackie Onassis, to get her hair washed and set for the week. The result was surprisingly soft, despite looking a little stiff. Her clothes were Halston and Pucci, and her shoes were Ferragamo. “Always spend a little more and get designer,” she would tell me when I got my first job. She liked to quote Helena Rubinstein: “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” With that in mind, she raised me to maintain myself: removal of unwanted body hair, which included electrolysis on my eyebrows; watching my figure; haircuts at Pierre Michel; school clothes from Lord & Taylor; regular facials, with a regimen of day and night creams; making sure my nails were filed and clean – and thus never leaving the house without great effort.
My father, who was nearly 40 when I was born, had no hair that I can remember. At one time, he wore a toupee and even had a headshot made with it where he resembled Cliff Robertson in the movie Obsession. In the mornings, after my father did his pushup exercises on a wheel that had handles, he would sit under his sunlamp in goggles and underwear as if the state of his family’s happiness depended on it. He was tan 365 days a year.
My sister, Debi, who looked like Peggy Lipton in The Mod Squad, spent hours straightening her long blond hair. She had tricks and hacks to achieve this, among them wrapping her hair around empty orange juice concentrate cans. I didn’t care about doing any of this. But whenever Debi offered to straighten my hair, saying something like, “Do you want me to make you look pretty?” I would always say yes.
My brother, Dorian, was beautiful, and he knew it. I would see him by the stereo in our living room getting ready to go out, practicing his dance moves in a shirt that was open enough to reveal his muscular physique. He told me that one night, at a disco, he was approached by a scout for the Broadway show Hair. Everyone said he resembled Jim Morrison, but I thought he was better looking than the poster that hung in our room – and more stylish.
I didn’t look like Jackie, Peggy, Cliff, or Jim. My hair was curly and uncontrollable, with numerous cowlicks. My mother called me Medusa even though I felt more like Roseanne Roseannadanna. My skin wasn’t olive but pale, and I burned in the sun. My eyebrows connected over my nose and were full before the arrival of Brooke Shields made it fashionable or Frida Kahlo entered my consciousness.
I was a late bloomer and looked much younger than my age.
When I was 20 and working at the trendy jewelry store Ylang Ylang, on Madison Avenue, my boss called me Pretty Baby and said that any man interested in me had to be a pedophile. When I was a 22-year-old skater in Central Park and finally a college graduate, most everyone thought I was 16. Newly married to Val at 31 and living in Hell’s Kitchen, I got carded often. At 38, my kindergartner came to me while I was washing the dishes, spun me around so I could face him, and said, a little unnerved, “Mom, you looked like a teenager for a second.”
The year I turned 50, I had surgery to remove my appendix. Val was seated by my bed as I dozed on and off in a drugged state. The nurse came in to check on me. “How is your beautiful daughter doing today?” she asked Val. I am two-and-a-half years older than he is. I popped one eye open to look at him. “She was kidding,” he said. “No she wasn’t,” I said and fell back asleep.
But soon after, I stopped getting comments on my youthfulness. When I said I was 52, no one said, “Oh my god, I can’t believe it.” I felt a pang of something, as if maybe I were catching up to my portrait in the attic, like Dorian Gray.
Recently I made a new young friend at the dog park. When she had a baby, I went to the hospital to visit her. The nurse wanted my friend to walk. “Give the baby to Grandma,” she said, as she nodded towards me and led my friend out of the room. I cradled the baby in my arms.
It started in earnest at the Acme supermarket a few months later. The checkout person, who seemed to be in his 20s, asked if I were a senior. I was flummoxed and didn’t respond. “It’s senior Tuesdays,” he explained. “You get a five percent discount.” “No,” I said. Once in the car, I searched for greys in the rearview mirror. Had I missed a hair color appointment? Did I forget to put concealer under my eyes? I just looked normal, I thought.
And what did he mean by senior? Senior used to be a good word for me. I couldn’t wait to be a senior in high school and then a senior in college. When I worked in a bank, I glowed with pride when I became a senior analyst. Did the checkout person think I was 60? Or 65? Do I now look older than my age?
My laptop comes alive with facial recognition, but lately it doesn’t recognize me. I punch in my PIN instead. At these times I wonder if something has changed in my face. Or maybe it’s my laptop that’s old.
Sometimes on a Zoom call I find myself distracted by my own face. Having to talk and see myself in the technological mirror is off-putting. Are those jowls, I think? Debi said they are called marionette lines. Are my eyelids drooping too much? They look like inverted commas bookending my green eyes. What is that line under my chin? Could it be a double chin? And where did all my eyelashes go? I stare, bewildered and transfixed.
Jackie Onassis died 30 years ago. Unfortunately, so did my mother. I am almost the same age as she was when she died. I’m probably heavier than she was at the end of her life. Would she recognize me?
Or my father, who at the end of his life looked like Alan Arkin. Would he be disappointed by my appearance? Would my hair still be too curly for him? Would he think the color was wrong?
One day when I was very young, maybe five, I was lying in my mom’s bed. My grandfather had just died. “If everyone dies in order of being born,” I said, “will I have to watch all of you die?” My mom nodded as she brushed a strand of hair away from my face. How sad, I thought. I didn’t want to lose anyone, ever, especially not her. Being the youngest didn’t seem so great.
These days I talk to Debi five times a day and Dorian, daily. As long as I have Debi and Dorian I will always be the baby.
With my milestone looming, I think of something Susan Sontag once said: “Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived.” Perhaps I will echo Gloria Steinem and declare, “This is what 60 looks like.”
I told Val that I wanted to celebrate my birthday. “Maybe don’t broadcast that you are 60,” he said.
I thought about his comment. I thought about how I hadn’t celebrated turning 40 or 50. Had I been ashamed? Did I think that was old? The next day I announced that I wanted a gathering – no, a party – at our house. “I want a big party with lots of balloons and a cake that says ‘60’,” I said. I felt defiant and a little angry. After all, I’ll never be this young again.
And soon, when I go to Acme, I will say proudly to the cashier, “I’m a senior,” and I will be five percent richer.
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