Older boomers

If you're an early Baby Boomer, you are probably experiencing what I'm experiencing: the blush, no, make that crinkling of age has appeared--not the first wrinkle--that happened years ago!, but the creping of skin, the sagging of breasts and testicles, the dimpling of fat.

That's bad, but worse--or worst--is the way the 40 crowd treats you. Oh, sure, those with great self-confidence get the good ol' gal/guy treatment, but most of us see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices, feel the first sniggers of disrespect because we've passed that line from upper middle-age into the throes of senior citizen. Doesn't matter if we don't feel it or look it (so we would like to think), but it's there--that snippet of pity, that crawling, squirming worm of disregard. We've arrived--but it's a place we never thought we would enter. Not old age! Not us! We were the vanguard of free love, women's freedom, equal rights--all the necessary and good things. Now what? Say it's not true!

But it is. Age spots, little ugly --say it--warts. I've thought myself a witch any number of times. My face and body look exactly the way that fairy tales describe those old hags. I'm becoming one. A witch. A hag. I baked in the sun with the whitest of them. Now I face the consequences.

This past summer opened my door of realization that I had not only entered old age, but was well into it. For so many years I waited for love, for the possibility of love. Married twice, each time an ugly disaster, life changing, life breaking. Remember in high school when possibility was the key to the future. Possibility. (I don't plan to attend my next class re-union in the fall because of how I look. Not only that, I don't want to see how they've aged, especially the one boy I so muched longed for all through high school. I wasn't his type. No possibility, then nor now. )I've been divorced from the second one for seven years and realized this summer that I cannot look toward possibility in love again. Would I want to show this body? No, I don't think so (spoken in the vernacular tone so popular today). I don't think so. What's more--I no longer want romance. An aquaintance asked me this summer if I was dating anyone. I popped out with: I don't date. And it's true--I don't date. He never called. Good for him.

I don't want to sound so pessimistic. That's how I feel today, Wednesday, October 1, 2009.

                                                          
                                                      This kissing couple shows how I would love to feel!