«I’m getting old and it’s a surprise»

I’m getting old. (There is a pause here for those who cannot hear this phrase without exclaiming in response: “Oh, don’t make it up!”, “Yes, you still wipe everyone’s nose!”, “What kind of nonsense are you talking about!” Please, please, you shout here, and in the meantime I’ll go pour myself some tea.)

I’m getting old and this is a surprise. What, is it time? Why wasn’t I warned? No, I knew, of course, that aging was inevitable, and I was even ready to meekly begin to grow old … someday, when I was over sixty.

This is how it turns out. All my life I sewed my pants in the waist. Now I don’t fit into any of them. Okay, I’ll get into some more. But what, tell me, is this detail hanging from above the belt? I didn’t order it, it’s not mine, take it back! Or here are the hands. I did not even suspect that the hands can grow stout. I bought myself Chinese things, sewn for Chinese women. Where are they now? Gave away to her daughters-in-law.

Last summer, I accidentally hit the shutter button and took a picture of the crook of my leg. Knee, part of the thigh, part of the lower leg. I laughed that this photo could be sent to a magazine of a certain kind — a seductive shot turned out. And last fall, I got sick with something strange, and my legs were covered with continuous hives.

The picture look was like in red pants, I showed off to the children. After this illness, the blood vessels on my legs began to burst, one after another. Once they start, they never end.

But the coolest thing is the eyes. Wrinkles — okay, who is against wrinkles. But darkened and swollen eyelids in a fold, but always red eyes — what is it? What is it for? I didn’t expect this at all! «What, were you crying?» Serezha asks. “And I answered with anguish: ‘I am always like this now.’” She did not cry, and did not intend to, and even slept a lot.

I could go on for a long time: about vision and hearing, about teeth and hair, about memory and joints. The ambush is that everything happens very quickly, and it is impossible to get used to the new you. In hindsight, I suddenly realize that over the past three decades, it turns out that I have changed very little. Three years ago, I posted a photo in which I am 18 years old, and received a bunch of comments: “Yes, you haven’t changed at all!” It is very strange to read this now and look in the mirror.

A mirror… Before looking into it, I gather inwardly now and say to myself: “Just don’t get scared!” And I still hover, staring at the reflection. Sometimes I want to get angry and stomp my feet: what looks at me from the mirror is not me, who dared to change my avatar?

Getting old is uncomfortable

Trousers do not climb, the coat does not fasten. Some women who have gone the same way before me say cheerfully: “But this is an occasion to update the wardrobe!” What a horror! Go shopping, look at ugly things, part with your usual, innocent clothes, fill the house with new …

Getting old is embarrassing

I began to tense up before meeting people whom I had not seen for a long time. Someone looks askance, someone looks away, someone says: «Something you look tired.»

The most immediate reaction was given by my neighbor in the country, a slightly crazy artist. She stared at me and yelled, “Wow! I’m used to you being a tomboy-tomboy, and you have wrinkles! She ran her finger over my wrinkles. And her husband, who is decently older than me and whom I always vomited, looked at me briefly and said: “Come on already with“ you ””.

This is a question, I don’t even know what to compare it with. It is impossible to forget the person who asked you the first time. Retired! Just a few years ago, my kids successfully passed me off as their big brother!

It’s a shame to grow old

A childhood friend of mine recently got divorced, remarried, and had children, finally his own, one by one. Now he is a young father, just like my eldest son. I feel like I’m a generation older than him now. For a long, long time, this opportunity is still available to men — to have children and raise them in the way you see fit now. And in general, the opportunity to start a family, to start building a family world anew. Available to men, but not to women. A cruel distinction.

Of course, growing old does not mean instantly becoming old, just as growing up does not mean instantly becoming an adult. I can still dance for hours, climb a high fence, solve a quick wits puzzle. But the top of the hyperbole has been passed, the vector has changed from childhood to old age.

Old age has become closer and more understandable, and helplessness rings the first bells when you can’t thread a needle or see how the package opens, and you think in a new way, walking up to the fifth floor. And I stopped memorizing poetry. It’s, you know, much tougher than red eyes.

Getting old is hard

The mirror does not let you get away, makes it obvious, literally, the transition to another age, to another category. And this means that we passed the last station, read the last chapter. The train only goes forward, and they won’t reread the chapter for you, you should have listened more carefully.

Past opportunities are left behind, you could live them, you had time, and whether you blew it or not blew it, no one cares. The train is leaving, wave to this station. Ah, my dear Augustine, everything, everything is gone.

There are very few texts for aging people on social networks. The ones that do exist are depressing. The author of the last such text that I read lamented that we have a cult of youth and, separated by commas, that so few older women afford miniskirts and bright cosmetics. That is, just like advertising, he pushed the idea «You can look young at any age.»

Tell me what… Hmm, I’ll start over. Tell me, why should I want to look young? I don’t want. I want to be myself, that is, to look my age.

Yes, getting old is hard. So growing up is hard. And be born. No one says to a baby: «It’s nothing that you were born, fold your arms and legs, as in the womb, yell until your parents cover you with blankets on all sides, and lie like this year after year.» Life moves on, one station is followed by another, youth is followed by maturity, and with it — other behavior, other social roles and … other clothes.

First, we celebrate the endless groundhog day at Molodist station, and then suddenly comes such a real classic old age, «House in the Village», a handkerchief, an apron and shuffling steps.

I see among my plus or minus peers a lot of those who concentrate on losses, for whom gray hair and beards, wrinkles and bald spots are signs of sadness, signs of lost opportunities, and nothing more. But I know, fortunately, and others — powerful. Because what is maturity, if not embodiment, calm power?

When you are young, you have to constantly prove that you are wealthy, despite your youth. When you’re young, you get poked in the older company. They look down on you by default. Sometimes it’s annoying. When you are not young, you get kicked out in a younger company. Sometimes it’s just as annoying.

The time when you begin to notice that in a large company everyone is poking each other, and you are stubbornly told “you”, that strangers turn to you with new courtesy, even with new respectfulness, is a sad and solemn time at the same time.

It is clear why sad, but solemn — because people show by their behavior that they see your life. It turns out that your life has become acquired, it has become experience, strength, power. As if you ate your pound of salt, served your twenty-five years and are now free. As if you, like the hero of a fairy tale, wore out your three pairs of iron shoes, passed all the tests and swam to clean water. And you can not suffer anything anymore, but just be and do.