This week, I’m still workshopping my new name. Should it be Mimi or Gigi?
I am determined to avoid using the classic fallback, GRANDMA, as it obviously isn’t a good fit—Right?
Besides, my mom will be Grandma, and I certainly don’t look like a grandma—Or do I?
Remember when you got irritated when young people asked if you needed help? Help carrying your groceries, help opening a heavy door, or even worse … offering you a seat in a crowded room. Immediately you thought, “Do I look like I need help?” Or the even more personal: “I’m in better shape than you are. Why are you offering to help me?”
Somewhere along the road of life—I think it was at about age 43 for me, and about the time when I stopped getting carded for alcohol at the checkout counter—that I began to take offers of assistance as a personal affront. I didn’t see them as acts of kindness or chivalry; I saw them as signs that I was getting old, and I didn’t like it at all!
Flash forward ten years … plus a few years if I’m being honest … and I appreciate it when young people offer their assistance! I think, “Their mother raised them right,” and thank them for their kindness. In exposing a double standard of motherhood, we teach our children to be kind and respectful, and to help one another. Then, in response to our own insecurities, we snap at them for doing it!
So, back to my warble about looking the part of a grandma. With the advent of Botox and GLP-1, the lines of aging have certainly blurred. I’m not sure who said this, but it still rings true. You can tell how old a person is by looking at the backs of their hands … and my hands definitely look the part. Spots that started in my thirties as “cute” freckles on my arms have morphed into large brown shapes that have migrated down to the back of my hands and refuse to be removed.
And don’t get me started on the whole neck situation, which creeped up on me, both figuratively and in reality. It seemed like one day I had a regular neck, and the next day it looked like elephant skin with a dried-out peach pit sitting on top!
Now that I’m getting close to sixty, I thought I’d embrace the saying, “Sixty is the new forty,” but if I’m being honest about my hands and my neck, I do look older than I did when I was in my forties.
But does that make me look like a grandma? In my mind, a grandma has short gray hair with a spiral permanent wave. Grandmas sit in rocking chairs, knitting doilies and teapot covers. Thanks to my hair colorist of twenty years, I don’t have gray hair, and I don’t have time to knit or sit in a rocking chair.
But you know who does? Young people!
Have you noticed the plethora of twenty-somethings with gray hair? And when I went to my local bookshop last week, there was a group of them attending a … knitting circle! There they were, happily ensconced in comfy, overstuffed chairs, knitting coffee mug cozies, and discussing literature. I envied them for a moment before realizing I didn’t have time for that! I needed to get to the gym and then do the grocery shopping so I could meal-prep my keto lunches for the week. Plus, I’ve run out of sunscreen, and everyone knows that sun exposure is the worst for making your skin age rapidly.
Even so, this has not answered the question of what a grandma looks like or the name she should choose. Perhaps we can spend a little time together pondering this riddle.
Maybe the real question we should be asking is, “What will it look like?”
