I speak to my body

 Many years ago, when I lived in Bolivia, I developed a sore on the bottom of my left foot—a nasty place in case one wants to walk. And I did. The doctor decided I needed an operation to remove the growth. (Now I know that there are less drastic solutions for this condition.) So, he operated. Then he sent me home with instructions to rest, with my foot elevated.

It was the middle of a school term, but I complied. (Now I know that today a doctor would have me up and walking an hour after the operation.) 

Actually, I was glad for a little time off to lay around and read novels. Except for the pain.

My foot hurt. So, I wrote it a letter. Here’s my letter:

Letter To My Left Foot 

Oh appendage, end of leg, end of body, connection to the world,

Why do you protest?
Have I not treated you well?
Have I ignored you?
Well, I'm not ignoring you now!
You are constantly on my mind these days, left foot.
I lay here with you high in the air, and I think of you.
I get up to go to the bathroom and all my focus dips down to where you meet the floor.
Eating, sleeping, reading my novel, you are on my mind.
I hope you can find satisfaction in this.
I hope this cools your heat, calms your ire, stifles your screams.

Oh foot, left foot, please accept my profound apologies for having ignored you, belittled you, stuffed you into shoes, exposed you to dirt and grime, and--more times than I can calculate--stepped on you.

And now--hear my confession--I must tell you in all honesty that I probably will continue to do all of the above, once you stop screaming.

In spite of that, please consider being nice to me again.

Whatever you decide, we're stuck with each other, connected for life.
A treaty, left foot?
Let's try harder to get along, OK?

With warm regards,
The rest of your body.

I was just thinking this morning that at this time of life I could write letters to lots of body parts. I’m not sure they would read my letters. It probably wouldn’t make any difference.

Take my hands, for example. My hands used to be so soft and well-formed. Not only that, they could open tough lids without outside help. Strong. My hands were a source of pride. 

Now I think—how silly. 

Hal complemented me yesterday. “You have beautiful hands, Nancy,” he said. I’m afraid I made some cynical remark in reply. Bad me. Later I said, “Woops. Sorry. I accept your complement.”

Actually, my hands are much more interesting now than when I was young and vain. The lines go in so many directions. The spots are not symmetrical but I like abstract art. The nails are ridged, but the ridges are straight and orderly, in contrast to the spots. The knobby knuckles provide a geography of mountains and valleys. And the bruise marks are a lovely color of purple. 

I don’t think I’ll write a letter to my hands. Instead, I will talk to them. Here’s what I’ll say:

Thank you, hands, for almost 80 years of service. I can’t believe how many poems and stories you’ve written. You’re so creative. Years ago, you held hands with a young man as I promised to be faithful. You wore that beautiful ring for five years, until you grew skinny and it fell off in Lake Titicaca. Not your fault. We replaced it, not wanting your finger to feel naked.

You burped my babies, cooked spaghetti, washed my dishes, gripped the steering wheel as I drove to the market, buttoned my buttons, threw balls, cross-stitched flowers, and turned the pages on some wonderful books. I could go on and on.

I probably should have worn gloves when I did the dishes. I probably should have spoiled you more with exotic lotions. A manicure or two might have been nice. But you’ve been faithful anyway.

And now you’re so interesting, a map of lines and spots that tell the story of a lifetime of adventures, surprises, trials, and blessings. 

So, thank you. I promise to stop complaining about those interesting spots.

Now, which body part should I address next?

The aesthetics of declining body parts

 A few years ago, Nora Ephron published an essay in Vogue magazine called, “I Feel Bad about My Neck.” It’s her hilarious attempt to come to terms with the non-aesthetic aspects of aging female bodies. It helps me laugh as I face the same kinds of issues.

With Nora, it was her aging neck. She noticed that when she went out to eat with her aging girlfriends, they were all wearing turtleneck sweaters. This is what she calls “compensatory dressing.” Here’s how she describes the problem:

“Oh, the necks. There are chicken necks. There are turkey gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles. There are scrawny necks and fat necks, loose necks, crepey necks, banded necks, wrinkled necks, stringy necks, saggy necks, flabby necks, mottled necks. There are necks that are an amazing combination of all of the above…. You can put makeup on your face and concealer under your eyes and dye on your hair… but the neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood to see how old it is, but you wouldn’t have to if it had a neck.”

At this point I have to confess that my neck is just fine, thank you. My neck is not the problem, although it may become a problem someday. But Nora’s neck-laments serve as an example of the disastrous attacks aging makes on our bodies. I’m not speaking here of illnesses and disabilities, another and much more serious problem. I’m talking aesthetics. It’s Maria in West Side Story who sings, “I’m so pretty, oh so pretty,” not her Grandma.

Around this retirement community, I notice that almost no women wear short-sleeve shirts, even in the August heat. Even relatively slim women seem to have flabby upper arms. Give a little flick of the finger and watch the flab shimmy and shake. Better yet, don’t. Why does this happen even to those of us who exercise? Those who lift weights, for Pete’s sake?!!! (Poor Pete gets blamed for a lot of stuff.)

And then there’s the loose-fitting tops I insist on. I dread the day when a grandchild asks me, “Grandma, are you pregnant?” Although women’s magazines supply us with exercises guaranteed to take off tummy fat, I’ve heard it from more reliable sources that whatever we’ve accumulated by age 75 is now with us for life. Could that be true? What a dreary prospect. Really, it’s not fair.

I could go on and on to mention other sags, spots, blotches, wrinkles, purple lines, and hairy chins, but I won’t. You all know the list.

It’s the hands that really get me. I used to be known for my beautiful hands. Honest. Strangers would compliment me. Not anymore. My hands are now creatively polka-dotted with brown, red, and purple spots, scattered in a random pattern and intersected by the tiny crevasses we call wrinkles. My finger nails are ridged and brittle. If I chip one, I have to cut them all down, but arthritis makes it hard to squeeze the clippers, so I file away, hoping I can achieve a matching effect.

Hal reminds me that these hands have built sand castles, cut out paper dolls, washed dishes, changed baby diapers, washed dishes, patted the heads of crying children, written poems, washed more dishes, played my guitar, and been lifted up in praise. I shouldn’t be so critical, he tells me. They’re beautiful.

Okay. Maybe I can talk myself into believing that. Maybe I can’t. We’ll see.

This week I watched again one of my favorite movies. It’s called “Real Women Have Curves” and takes place among Latinas in Los Angeles. The teenaged protagonist, Ana, is overweight and suffers the constant nagging of her mother (an overweight middle-aged woman) to lose the fat or she won’t ever get married. 

Ana works with other Latinas from her barrio in her aunt’s garment factory. Actually, it’s a sweatshop with no fans (can’t get dust on the dresses). Ana’s aunt designs beautiful dresses and the team of six seamstresses work all day at sewing machines, struggling to meet deadlines. The factory makes $18.00 per dress that might then be sold for several hundred dollars in an exclusive boutique downtown.

Ana’s co-workers are all older than she is, and they are all overweight. But funny. The banter and teasing alone make the movie worth it.

One summer day, it’s so hot in the factory that Ana can’t take any more, so she defiantly takes off her shirt and trousers, and prances around in her underwear to the gasps of the ladies and the cry of her mother, “Ana! What are you doing? For shame!”

“No! No shame,” Ana responds. “This is me. This is how I am. And it’s okay! Ladies, join me!” Soon every woman (excepting the mother) is liberated from her outer garments and they all begin to dance and sing in the factory aisle. Celebrating themselves and their bodies.

There’s something very good about that. Not that I’m suggesting that we try it here in the retirement community. But accepting our aging bodies as part of a natural process is good. It’s not letting cultural values of beauty put us down. It’s celebrating who we are in this time of life.

The next time you see me, if you ask, I’ll show you my beautiful hands. 

We’ll save the neck for later.

Twisted hands, cheerful heart

 Yesterday we celebrated Mother’s Day with a barbecue at my son’s home. At the end of the meal, David asked everyone to give a memory of their mother, and we went around the table. David said some nice things about me. Hal reminisced about his mom… and so on. When my turn came up the only thing that popped into my head was the interesting coincidence that that very day, May 14, was also my mother’s birthday. How amazing, right? Everyone said their own version of Wow! and we went on to the next subject.

Later I wondered why I hadn’t said something more significant about this woman I remember with so much gratitude. Something about her kindness, her simple meals, how she read books to us every night, how she sewed my Easter dress one year and bought me a bonnet and shiny patent leather shoes to go with it. Actually, this is all rather normal. Not especially interesting. Nothing funny or extraordinary. Just common ordinary grace.

But what’s wrong with that?

OK. If there’s one thing that stands out in my memories of Mom, it’s her hands. When I was in grade school, the swelling and pain in her feet and hands were finally diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis. My parents didn’t make a big deal about the diagnosis, so there was no family trauma surrounding it. Mom began to take medications for the pain and inflammation, but she never talked about it or complained. She just kept on doing mom stuff and going off to work everyday.

Both my parents were public school teachers, Dad in the high school and Mom in primary school. Mom continued teaching, but I noticed the swelling in her hands and that it was becoming harder for her to do stuff around the house. We kids had our chores, but we didn’t always cheerfully comply.

By the time I was a high school freshman, her hands and feet had become bent, swollen and deformed. She was declared legally disabled and began to receive disability compensation from the teachers’ union. My parents handled this calmly so we kids saw no reason to be alarmed. Life went on. She became a stay-at-home mom again, going about her duties with a cheerful spirit

But with the years her limbs became more and more twisted and her whole body was affected in different ways. She died at the age of 57, more from the effects of years of taking Corticosteroids for the pain than from the disease itself.

Sometime after her death, I was doing research on my family background, and I came across a kind of manifesto Mom had written when she was 17. It’s entitled, “My Ideal Woman,” and is a list of all the characteristics she wanted to grow into. In the introduction, she admits that, “My Ideal Woman is so idealistic as to be rather fictional sounding.” A list of 14 points follows, betraying both the idealism and the immaturity of a teenager. What was especially poignant to me was that the first two points had to do with hands. She wrote of her “ideal woman,”

1.     She does not have to excel in outward beauty but must show character in the mold of her face and in the shape of her hands.

2.     Her hands are shapely and she has well-kept nails.

It’s a mercy she couldn’t see ahead to the hands life finally dealt her.

I will list a few other of her points. They all make me smile.

6.      She does not think of ‘self’ first and is cheerful except when it is impossible to be so. (A little bit of realism there.)

7.      All of her clothes are made by her own hands (except for wraps, accessories, and undergarments). (So glad for the clarification.)

8.      She is healthy and has suffered no illnesses save those common to most people such as measles and mumps.

9.      She scorns gossip and secretly is contemptuous of those who do so extensively.

1      She has poise and a wonderful personality, making her very popular.

She goes on to write of her tall husband (right) and two blond children (wrong, there were three of us), her artistic output, and her excelling at sports (especially golf, swimming, and tennis). She ends with saying that her ideal woman “is somewhat like Abraham Lincoln and Louisa Alcott only she doesn’t have Louisa’s temper or impatience.”

Oh, and she also mentions that her ideal woman is a Quaker.

Life certainly turned out differently for my mother than her dreams as a young girl. But I think I like the real woman better than the ideal. God made something beautiful out of her suffering, and I am the better for it.

I don’t want to fall into cliché here—“my sainted mother” and all that. She was real and human, feisty sometimes, sometimes manifesting more Louisa Alcott than Abraham Lincoln. And I don’t want to romanticize the beauty of her old gnarled hands. Too many sappy poems and Hallmark cards take on that role. They tend to nauseate rather than inspire.

But I’ll admit it. In memory, my mother’s hands are beautiful to me.

Now that I’m growing older, I find that it’s my hands that show my age more than any other physical aspect. I used to pride myself on my beautiful hands (somewhat like my 17-year-old mother). People sometimes complemented me. No one does that any more. The seven top signs of aging in hands are wrinkles, age or sun spots, dry skin, loose skin, veins, stained and brittle nails, and red peeling skin. The only thing on the list I don’t have (yet) is red peeling skin.

Look up “aging hands” on the internet and most of the sites address the topic of how to keep your hands looking young. Lots of good advice out there, most of it dedicated to postponing the inevitable.

I am faced with the decision to choose a mature perspective on aging hands and beauty. I’ll do what I can to protect my skin—gloves when washing dishes (which I never did as a younger woman), lotion, good grooming and so on. I probably won’t try any miracle pills or expensive dream creams. I’ll let myself—and my hands—grow older and not worry about how attractive, or not, they are.

And I’ll hope my daughter and granddaughters find some good ways to remember me on Mother’s Day.