I no longer see the youth in my face. When the light falls through the bedroom window at a certain angle in the morning, I see the old woman climbing out. She’s under my eyes — those fine lines deepening.
I no longer see the youth in my face. When the light falls through the bedroom window at a certain angle in the morning, I see the old woman climbing out. She’s under my eyes — those fine lines deepening. I see my skin for the tissue it is.
It was a Sunday. Reversing the truck into a spot beneath the iron wood on Hanalei Bay, Wes and I sat with a blue cooler between us on the bench seat. Chips spilling from the bag on the dashboard and a sandwich split between us, we gazed across a bikini speckled beach. I was chewing my sandwich with great satisfaction when I happened to glance up at the visor on the truck — it was flipped down exposing the little mirror fastened there. To my horror, framed in the four-inch reflection I saw the mouth of Frankenstein. Never had I noticed all the lines creeping around the border of my lips.
When did this transition occur? It’s as though I went from 20-something to the mid-forties, skipping 30 altogether.
When I smile those descending lines around my mouth disappear. Luckily, I smile a lot. But you can’t smile and chew without the risk of appearing insane. I tried and it is not a good look.
About 20 years ago (before gray hair and wrinkles) I learned a Japanese word for the beauty that only aging can bring: wabe, (pronounced wah-be). The Japanese man who turned me on to this word described it as what happens to a rose in a vase on the table as each petal falls from the bud.
“There is beauty in the loss of petals,” he said. “There’s the beauty of the petals left on the rose and those laying on the table top.”
He said it can also apply to a well-worn sweater or beloved coffee mug – inanimate objects that absorb the energy of the user and only get better with use. Until the day I saw my wrinkles up close I believed I was a person who would express wabe. Vanity has gotten the best of me though.
My dad was one of the lucky few who embraced (or ignored) aging. His thick brown hair improved with the addition of silver streaks and his Play-dough face grew more expressive with wrinkles.
Mom on the other hand resists the process still. There was a period when she threatened to get a face lift and this upset dad.
“What, you don’t want to grow old with me?” He’d lament.
A red leather wedding album filled with eight-by-ten black and white photos captures the sheen of their youth. They were 26 years-old and mom had this adorable gap between her front teeth. Mom saw the gap as a flaw though. I remember how excited she was to have all her teeth pulled in lieu of dentures in the ’80s. She wanted a Farrah Fawcett smile at any cost.
Later my father would share his regret at that decision. His last bit of advice to me a few months before the brain tumor was, “Fight for your teeth, every last one of them.”
James Eugene Woolway died with a full set of his God-given teeth and the heart of a 40 year-old, according to his surgeon.
As far as I can tell, there’s only one way to counter aging: attitude.
Wrinkles. Bah. What humbug.
• Pam Woolway is the lifestyle writer at The Garden Island. Her column “Being there” appears every other week.
