Getting Older

I think about aging EVERY SINGLE DAY! 

I look in the mirror and wonder where my youthful face went. 

 

The secret about staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age

~ Lucille Ball ~. 

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it's up to you to merit the face you have at fifty. ~Coco Chanel~

Old Age: First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.  

~Leo Rosenberg~

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon"

Said the old man, "I do that too."

The little boy whispered. "I wet my pants."

"I do that too," laughed the old man."

Said the little boy, "I  often cry."

The old man nodded, "So do I."

"But worse of all," said the boy, "it seems

Grownups don't pay attention to me."

And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.

"I know what you mean," said the old man.

~Shel Silverstein~

I don't feel really really really old, but I remember when my eyes were opened to aging.  It didn't happen when I looked into my grandmothers eyes, or felt the soft loose skin on the underside of her arm.  It wasn't when I noticed my mother had gone gray, or when my dad's front tooth broke off.  And is wasn't when I no longer got the full attention of my grandfather pinning me down for a whisker burn, not because I couldn't take it, but that he couldn't get back up off the floor.

It was in nursing school.  My eyes were opened to what happens to us when we lose bladder control, and when our minds don't function like we want them to when memory seems to close in on us or almost disappear altogether.  

I remember being really resentful of having my ignorance taken.  I didn't want to know what was coming.  I liked being in the dark about that part of the future. But once your eyes are open, they don't close again.