A few weeks ago, Dan and I were with some friends who are almost as goofy as we are. As we finally started to leave (The Dog! The Dog awaits us…), we somehow fell into a joke about choosing our summer clothes to cover up parts of our bodies that we never thought about when we were younger.  That morphed into the observation that no one was rushing to do an AI image of any of us undressed…I laughed, and said, “well, my skin doesn’t fit like it used to.”  To which Dana responded, “We never had a full length mirror in our house.  I remember, about 20 years ago, coming out of the bathroom in a friend’s house and seeing myself naked for the first time in years…I rushed in to Bob crying “I am sooo sorry!  I didn’t know…”  Bob, who is pretty darn trim for someone “our age”, cracked up at the recollection.

Let me make it clear – I do not, in any way, want to be 20 or 30 again.  Or even Taylor Swift, who looks amazing at the advanced age of 35.

But when I turned 40, I must have spent the equivalent of a thousand dollars in today’s money on face creams, cleansers, exfoliating masques….not to mention eye serums that promised to eliminate the now-visible dark circles that are an inevitable part of my Scandinavian heritage….Marilyn, a very attractive older woman (probably 60?) in my church urged me to wear a bikini as long as I could, because someday I would not be caught dead in one.

Of course, the underlying story is how we get used to our aging bodies. In my mind, I still look like I did when I was forty or even fifty.  Or even 60.  After all, I I am lucky to fit into many of the same clothes….But, when I look at pictures ranging from 40-ish to almost 79, I don’t. 

I am recognizably the same person – but the differences are not very subtle.  I look like a grandma.  I do not wear a bikini any more.  And, when in a bathing suit, I make sure that I have a flowy coverup that goes down to my knees.  Or longer.

I recall the 50 mile bike race (in a hilly part of Wisconsin) that I managed to finish (first in my age category!) 25 years ago, as if it was yesterday. I no longer ride my bicycle.  In fact, I decided to give it away after we moved to Boulder and I confronted narrow bike lanes on the side of busy roads and mountain-bike ready dirt trails going up steep slopes that had replaced my treasured, leafy, flat bike paths around Minneapolis’ chain of lakes.  The cyclists in Boulder wear a lot of Lycra….Well, I have an old friend in England (even older than I am) who sold his car a few years ago and bikes everywhere on a collapsible/portable vehicle.  But he had long practice on hilly streets in Greece to fortify his balance and still lives much of the year in an urban center where everything he needs is close. 

Part of my decision about the bicycle is not the limitations of my body – it is me, always happiest when in a chair, looking at a mountain—not climbing it. Part of it is also caution: Breaking a major bone at my age is a lot tougher than when I was younger, and I was warned after my hip replacement that I should avoid, at all costs, falling backward in a certain way that I am not sure I fully understand but deeply fear….

But losing the freshness of early middle-age and the elasticity of older but still bike-ready Karen is coupled with an intensely held conviction that I am still a CUTE and FEISTY old lady: The changes are just part of being an ever-emergent human being. I have not been transformed like busy caterpillar, dissolving into nothing in order to break out as a butterfly with a very short shelf life. No, this is all part of the gradual shifts that, rather than transforming me, enable glimpses of how I am still becoming different. Like my pictures, I am evolving toward something that is still me, but changed in some ways. My sense of humor has improved – a lot.  I have a relationship with patience, meditation, and quiet that often makes me feel light somewhere in my heart region.  I have learned to listen to other people rather than immediately focusing on what I should be saying next.  I am not sure that I love more, but I know that I love more deeply.  Joy comes quite easily, in small delicious spurts.  It is all worth the deeper wrinkles, a slightly gimpy gait, and a firm preference for 7-year-old games that involve sitting in a chair rather than on the floor…

Am I raging against the dying of the light- heck no!  Dylan Thomas was not even 40 when he wrote those lines, and hadn’t a clue.  And if my skin—or yours – doesn’t fit as well as it used to…well, we still have a lot of fun.  And we appreciate what hiking poles were meant for. But I’m pretty sure about the bikini…

P.S. — the bikini grandma isn’t me. It was generated using AI with the terms grandma, bikini and fun!