Didn't My Skin Used to Fit?

by Martha Bolton

  The summer of life—the teenage–young adult years—is full of fun and wonder. You experience life on a new level, making your own decisions and having to live with the outcomes. Life is an adventure, and you want to enjoy every minute of it. You might stumble once in a while getting your footing, but you’ve been around long enough to realize the importance of getting up and trying again.

  Fall is the season of change—in nature and in life. Your children are moving out and going away to college or getting married and having children of their own. You might be changing jobs or retiring, downsizing your home, reevaluating your priorities, and altering your opinions on a thing or two. Age tends to mellow all but the most closed-minded individual.

  Winter is a time for reflection, a time to look back and smile about the good times and assess what you’ve learned from the not-so-good times. A tree doesn’t fear when winter’s coming. It doesn’t lower its head and cry because most of its leaves have dried up and fallen off. (OK, maybe a weeping willow cries in winter, but it probably has other issues it’s dealing with.)

  A tree knows that every season of its life is equally beautiful. That’s why it stands just as proudly in the fall as in the spring. It’s content no matter what the season. It doesn’t try to change its fall colors into summer colors or wear its spring colors after autumn has set in. It takes each season as it comes and appreciates its beauty for what it is.

  We could learn a lot from a tree.

  There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

  —Albert Einstein

  40

  The Search

  I tried killing a spider today. I squashed it three times with my shoe but it bounced right back. That’s when I realized it was a dust ball.

  I think my age is starting to affect my eyesight.

  Mistaking a dust ball for a spider may be a more common occurrence than one might think. I’m sure many middle-agers have made the same incorrect assessment. Mistaking a dust ball for a cat, however, would not only mean I need a new pair of glasses but also the entire crew of Molly Maids.

  A good friend of mine warned me that sometime after forty my eyesight would change. He said I would be reading the newspaper, a magazine, or a book and all of a sudden the letters would start running together. ‘‘Congress passes tax cut’’ would become ‘‘Fuphmfi hkswop ruilizhs.’’ Either version would still be hard to believe.

  My friend was right, though. Once I hit forty, my vision did change, and it seemingly happened overnight. I went to bed with 20/20 vision, and by breakfast I couldn’t read the morning paper unless someone was holding it ten feet away.

  OK, it’s not quite that bad, but I am up to a 2 percent magnification in drugstore glasses. My optometrist is the one who recommended I buy my glasses at the drugstore. He told me if 2 percent was all the magnification I needed, why not spend $10 instead of $100? I like my optometrist. Of course, he’s one of the last medical professionals still driving a Pacer.

  My biggest problem with glasses is remembering to keep them with me. I’ve left them at work, at church, at restaurants, at department stores, at gas stations. The most common place I leave them, though, is on top of my head. I can never find them there. It’s the last place I look.

  What I want to know is why we don’t lose other things on top of our head. When’s the last time you saw someone walking around with a curling iron on her head, looking for her curling iron? Or her brush. Or a football helmet. That’s because you usually don’t forget when those things are up there. The curling iron is a bit unwieldy, a brush might be a possibility, but a football helmet? Well, you’d just know. So why is it so easy to lose our glasses up there? I guess it’s just one of those unexplained phenomena of life.

  I should probably buy one of those little dishes they make especially for glasses. You know, the ones that say something clever like ‘‘Here they are, stupid.’’ But I’m afraid a dish to hold my glasses would be just as easy to misplace.

  Maybe they should start equipping eyeglasses with tracking devices. Then as soon as we realize our glasses are missing, we could call a central number, report the disappearance, and within seconds our glasses would start beeping.

  Of course, if they are on top of your head, all the beeping could really give you a migraine.

  I would never have amounted to anything were it not for adversity.

  —J. C. (James Cash) Penney

  41

  Scars

  Most of us don’t make it through life without a few scars. Over the years we’ve scraped a knee or two, maybe even broken a few bones. Life, though full of wonder and excitement, also comes with its share of pain.

  When our youngest son was just two years old, he had to undergo two separate heart surgeries. The first was to repair what is called a patent ductus; the second was open-heart surgery to repair a ventricular septal defect.

  After the first surgery was performed successfully, the doctor informed me in the Intensive Care Unit that the second surgery needed to be done within a few weeks. I wasn’t prepared for that news. We had just made it through one grueling ordeal and now we were going to turn around and do it all over again. I had been hoping for more of a breather. I couldn’t understand why the second surgery couldn’t wait for at least a year or so.

  One of the reasons the medical team felt they couldn’t wait any longer than a few weeks was the fact that adhesions would start to form after the first surgery and these make a second incision more difficult. So we braced up for the second go-around in a few short weeks. Thankfully it was the right decision and all went well.

  Did you know that the emotional wounds we suffer in life can also form adhesions around them? These make it difficult for help to get through—not impossible, however. God’s love can cut through even the toughest scars.

  If you’ve been scarred by an abusive or controlling parent, sibling, spouse, or even a friend, or if you’ve suffered some other traumatic incident in your life, chances are you’ve developed some adhesions to protect that wounded area. These may prevent further injury, but they also keep you from making repairs on the inside. In this second half of your life, maybe it’s time to allow God to do what he does best—cut through those adhesions and mend your heart and spirit. The longer you wait, the tougher the scars become.

  An unexamined life is not worth living.

  —Socrates

  42

  Hold Your Tongue

  I remember the very first time someone called me ‘‘ma’am.’’ I was only in my twenties, but it felt like I had just been wished a happy birthday by Willard Scott.

  Until that night, I had always been referred to as ‘‘girl,’’ ‘‘hon,’’ ‘‘sweetie,’’ maybe even an occasional ‘‘Hey, you!’’ But now I was being called ma’am. Ma’am. There’s no way to put a youthful spin on ma’am.

  ‘‘Lady’’ is about as bad. The first time I heard ‘‘lady’’ in reference to me was jarring, too.

  ‘‘Hey, lady, do you know that’s wet cement you just parked in?’’

  I looked around. Surely he can’t be talking to me, I thought. I was no lady. I was a girl. But since he was looking straight at me, and since my car did indeed seem to be just spinning its wheels, obviously stuck in something, I figured the title must have been intended for me.

  Men don’t have this problem. Addressing a teenage boy as ‘‘sir’’ is usually considered a compliment. You can be a sir at six as easily as at sixty.

  We women, however, aren’t in that much of a hurry to get to the ‘‘ma’am stage,’’ so don’t rush us.

  I suppose it all evens out when we get into our senior years. People go back to calling us ‘‘sweetie,’’ ‘‘hon,’’ and ‘‘Hey, you!’’ again.

  We might even get a few ‘‘Hey, babes’’ tossed in our direction. I wouldn’t mind that. It would remind me that I’ve still got it. Now, if only I could remember what ‘‘
it’’ is and where I put it!

  Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

  —Franz Kafka

  43

  Running Hot and Cold

  Circulation problems can sometimes develop as we grow older. Our blood still flows, it just takes it a little longer to make its rounds.

  Lately I’ve started having some mild circulatory problems. I’ve got body parts falling asleep at all hours of the day and night, which I don’t really think is fair. Why should I be getting only seven or eight hours of sleep a night while my right leg is getting twelve?

  Circulation problems can also cause our body’s thermostat to malfunction. We’ll often find ourselves feeling colder than anyone else. You start to realize this when you look around and notice you’re the only one on the beach wearing a parka.

  I’ll admit my body temperature runs substantially colder than anyone else in our house. My teeth will be chattering and I’ll have lost all feeling in my feet while everyone else is opening windows and putting ice packs on their heads to cool off.

  I get cold everywhere—the house, the car, lava pits. Frankly, I think someone should come out with a personal mini-heater. You know, like those mini-fans you can hold in your hand. Personal mini-heaters could be used on airplanes, in cars, at the workplace, and most importantly, in grocery stores—they could distribute them to customers just before they embark down the frozen-food aisle.

  I could really use a mini-heater at home. My husband, lord of the thermostat, likes to keep our house set at sixty-eight degrees. When he’s not looking, I usually turn it up just a bit, somewhere between ‘‘Three Mile Island’’ and ‘‘Volcano.’’

  Thus begins our ‘‘Dance of the Thermostat.’’ My husband takes the lead. First, he turns, slides four steps to the left, stretches his arm up John Travolta-style, and deftly turns the thermostat down. I pivot on one foot, take three steps to the right, do a backbend, and turn it back up. He takes my hand, twirls me in two complete revolutions, leads me eight steps away, and moonwalks back to the thermostat to turn it down again.

  The dance is really quite interesting to watch. Once in a while one of the kids will try to cut in and set the thermostat where they want it, but it’s not long before it’s just my husband and me again, freezing and sweating and dancing until dawn. How romantic!

  It’s too bad Arthur Murray never offered courses in the Dance of the Thermostat. He could have made a fortune.

  Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don’t choose to have it known.

  —Lord Chesterfield

  44

  That’s Entertainment?

  My taste in music has changed over the years. Not that I’ve become a die-hard polka fan or have the world’s largest collection of Lawrence Welk music videos or anything like that, but I don’t listen to the same music I used to listen to, either.

  These days I prefer ‘‘easy listening’’—that’s all those songs you hear while riding elevators or getting your teeth drilled. I’m not all that fond of most of today’s rock music. Often the lyrics are too explicit, and I don’t like all that bass. If I want to get my heart pounding, there are other ways to do it, like finishing that sit-up I started last week.

  I don’t think I’d ever be able to get into the punk rock scene, either. Mosh pits don’t entice me in the least. All that pushing and shoving and bumping into each other. I get enough of that at after-Christmas sales.

  I do like country music, though. I like songs that tell a story, even if it is about some poor guy’s wife getting trampled to death by an elephant at the circus and how the ringmaster sends him the bill for the elephant’s therapy sessions after such trauma. Life’s tough. Singing about it is how we cope.

  My taste in movies has changed, too. I don’t enjoy sophomoric humor or watching the antics of some seventeen-year-old heartthrob who thinks a liver spot is a stain you get on your shirt during dinner. I prefer complicated plots, good dialogue, and a forty-year-old heartthrob.

  And there’s been a change in what I read. I’ve traded in Teen Beat and Seventeen for Newsweek and Time, and I’ll take an occasional peek at Modern Maturity (in a plain brown wrapper, of course).

  Yet even though my taste in entertainment has changed over the years, I’m still the same person. The basic elements of one’s personality don’t change. If we were easygoing and reserved in our youth, we’ll probably be easygoing and reserved in our later years. By the same token, if we were the adventurous daredevil type in our twenties, we’ll still be the adventurous daredevil type when we reach our seventies. In other words, we’ll be the one hang gliding off the patio at ‘‘the home.’’

  Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.

  —Oscar Wilde

  45

  Made to Last

  I recently attended the thirty-third California International Antiquarian Book Fair, which was held at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. My friend Cynthia Christenssen had invited me to go along with her. I had never been to an antiquarian book fair before, and it was fascinating to see the vast collection of rare and antique books.

  One display especially caught my eye. It was a handful of pages from an old writing book that had been used by Mark Twain. There in his very own handwriting was part of one of Twain’s manuscripts, complete with corrections. It was fascinating— and, of course, priced well into the thousands of dollars.

  Many of the books at the show were in the same price neighborhood. There was one collection by Chaucer that was selling for, I believe, $250,000. My Visa card doesn’t go that high. I couldn’t have bought the bookmark that went along with it.

  It was interesting, though, to watch people walk from booth to booth, surveying the rare and old books with respect and excitement. One book was 350 years old. Another was 200. There were books we remembered from our childhood (not the 200 one, of course). Rare book dealers had come from as far away as England, Germany, Spain, and countless other countries to display their collections and offer them for sale. If anyone had brought a book in that was less than ten years old, I don’t think it would have gotten past the front gate.

  So what makes these old and used books so valuable? Much of the reason has to do with the simple fact that they’ve survived. It’s not easy to preserve a book for forty or fifty years, much less hundreds. They’ve seen too many yard sales, swap meets, and, of course, two-year-olds. Many books can’t take it and eventually succumb to the wear and tear.

  People are like books. Our pages may tear or turn yellow and our binding become loose. Some of our ideas might even sound dated or passé. But if we can somehow hold ourselves together, survive the elements to which life exposes us, and keep most of our pages intact, we’ll have become a rare and special book indeed.

  Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

  —Mark Twain

  46

  What’d You Say?

  My husband suffered some hearing damage in his years of service with the Los Angeles Police Department. Today officers are required to wear ear protectors while qualifying with their service revolver. That wasn’t the case when my husband joined the department, so the monthly visits to the firing range took their toll, and now he’s paying for it.

  High-pitched sounds are what give him the most trouble, especially background noises at restaurants and women’s voices. Even with hearing damage, though, he refuses to get a hearing aid. I don’t understand this thinking, but he’s not alone. A lot of people think a hearing aid will make them look older than they want to look. Frankly, I don’t get it. Does answering the question ‘‘Did the mail come?’’ with ‘‘No, I didn’t see the cow’’ really make a person look younger?

  Though my husband’s hearing was damaged years ago, hearing loss is also a side effect of aging. And
we don’t only start losing our hearing, but our ears seem to get bigger, too. They continue to grow as we age, some of them even turning outward. Maybe that’s to give us more access for trimming ear hairs?

  I’ve found, though, that what most middle-aged and older people suffer most from is selective hearing. They hear what they want to hear. My husband can hear me whisper a Home Shopping Network order into the telephone from two rooms away, but he can’t hear me calling him to dinner.

  He can hear the rear fender of my car barely tap the planter as I’m backing out of the driveway—while he’s taking a shower in the house—but he can’t hear the telephone ringing when he’s two feet away from it.

  One of these days someone’s going to come out with a chip for hearing aids that would work like the V-chip in a TV. It could be programmed to edit out all the things you don’t want to hear: ‘‘Honey Do’’ lists, mother-in-law visiting plans, and long distance service sales pitches, to name a few. The advantages would be endless.

  Until then, if we want to get out of uncomfortable situations, I guess we’ll just have to keep on faking it.

  He’s so old that when he orders a three-minute egg, they ask him for the money up front.

  —Milton Berle

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