Saturday, March 17, 2012

This is What 45 Looks Like

March 2012, St. Michael's, MD

The decision to stop coloring my hair was not a fashion statement. I’ve never kept abreast of trends. It was one born of fear.

A date arrived at my door for a movie night and immediately after entering the apartment, tears sprang from his eyes. “What is that smell? Can I open a window?” 

I had spent the earlier part of the day performing my bi-weekly “girl stuff” ritual, something I’d done for years. I’d mix hair color, apply to my roots, cover my head in one of the many shower caps I’ve saved from hotel room amenities for this very purpose, give myself a thick mud mask and soak in the tub with bath oil.  With all of the prep, and the sultry outfit I had chosen, this wasn’t the reaction I expected.

But sure, I had experienced the chemical odor of peroxide and ammonia before, it was a familiar thing, not so unusual or that unpleasant to me, and what with the mud mask, the oils, my bathroom became an aromatic panoply.

However, his irritated eyes provided answers to questions I had been asking myself for the past year. Why couldn’t I remember what I had just been talking about? Did I have Adult ADD? Had these chemicals been leeching through my skull and causing some sort of drop out where my impeccable memory used to be? (Click here to read the incredible entry WikiPedia has on Hair Coloring- wow!)

During my next trip west, I made an appointment for a full physical exam, telling Dr. Mitch that I had a possible brain problem. It was beyond my belief that with all the New York Times crosswords I did that I could completely forget entire conversations just like that. I was always the one who remembered everything, what I was wearing, what you were wearing, songs playing in the background, the weather, what we said, how we reacted. 


It was implausible that this blip in my brain would just suddenly occur out of nowhere.  Something was definitely wrong. And like the mensch he is, and probably because I was still covered by great IATSE insurance, he hooked me up and gave me a full MRI.

It was clear.

“Listen”, he began, I sitting sheepishly on the table, “you’re not a hypochondriac, but you’re not a spring chicken either”. 



“You told me that when I turned 40!” I returned.  


“You’re forgetting words, you lose where you are in a sentence, you’re out and you can’t remember what you were doing.  Am I right?”
  
I nodded, tears now springing from my eyes.  

Delivered in his typical no-nonsense way, “You’re getting old. This is part of the process. It happens to all of us.”

The road I had taken to crazy eerily resembling a scene from Hannah and Her Sisters, without the smoke-filled exam room, left me feeling foolish, but I’ll admit, a bit relieved.

Lupe & I, San Antonio 2008
Aging is a natural phenomenon no one prepares you for. We try in vain to sweep the liver spots and bursitis under the carpet. With the help of the ad biz, our society tells us that we can feel young, look young, dress young, essentially stay young. But in reality, our bodies march forward, and those brown spots may possibly need to be biopsied. Lupe and I have been chatting about this a lot lately. 

While science proves that we are living longer, logically, if I live another 45 years, I will die at 90, so I don't think it's incorrect to claim, in fact, that I am middle aged.

The actual truth of it isn’t that graceful. It’s fucking bewildering. Not to mention our snowballs that quickly turn into landslides.  Cancer. Sudden deaths. A divorce that surprises you. The failing health of family members. Losing a parent and the un-tethering of self.  Parenting your parents. Watching your kids leave for college.  

It isn’t something that we should be ashamed of talking about. This is the pivot point, the part where the seesaw tips to the other side.

There seem to be a lot of people writing about this stage of life these days, and there is a lot I agree with in Patricia Cohen’s New York Time’s article “Get a Midlife”.   She argues that middle age is defined as when you don’t feel young anymore, but it could also mean that this is the time in your life when you are most likely to be your happiest, achieve your greatest goals, make the wisest decisions.

It has to be OK to admit that mid-life happens. Why do we fake ourselves out by making excuses like, well I just ran a marathon, and I don’t feel this age. Or “you’re only as old as you feel”. What about when you start feeling your age? I haven’t seen a clever quip for that phenomenon. 

Lupe and I have this tribe theory, and perhaps this important rite of passage, this time of big feelings, of letting go, of grieving, of regrets and sometimes, growing pains you never thought you would experience again is sublime and deserves observance, like a mid-life mitzvah. 

At LeeAnn's Wedding 2006
This the time where we acknowledge the wisdom gained in our experiences, and set examples for the younger generation.  And as my friend LeeAnn recently told me, “This is the time when we have to think about what we want the rest of our life to look like.”

Recently, I learned an interesting fact from my other favorite doctor, scientist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  Humans have only been evolving on this planet for the past 200,000 years, while dinosaurs roamed for over one billion. So, basically, we’ve occupied less than 1/5 of the time the earth has been in rotation.

We are so infinitesimally small, which is probably why we want to make our world so big, our issues so meaningful, our opinions sound the loudest. We’ve become so self-centered, cramming in all the space in our lives because the fact is, we just don’t like to admit that our time is finite. When I recounted this opinion to a friend, he replied “We think of death in this country as a failure”. 

Leave it to Cher to offer some humble pie. During a Vanity Fair interview, the age question came up. “… I don’t like it. It’s getting in my way. I have a job to do, and it’s making my job harder.
“I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs at my family, ‘Work out! Work out! Old age is coming!’ At some point you will need the strength. Who would have ever thought you would get this old?”

I admired her honesty.

I have bursitis, a freckle in my right eye, new age spots every day, but thanks to yoga and walking, I am probably in the best shape of my life. That doesn’t mean that I don’t look at Elle Fanning’s face and think, “did my skin ever look like that?”  It’s hard to believe when I have a huge brown spot on my face that a Clinique product promises to cover up, using a speckled egg as an example. 

Self Portrait February 2012, Moloka'i
I would wager that 50% of the people who comment on the fact that I am fully salt and pepper exclaim, “You’re too young to have grey hair! Why can’t you just get it done?” The truth is; I love the freedom I’ve acquired from NOT spending so much time doing root maintenance. It’s liberating to get that time back.

With Vanessa on my 45th Birthday, March 7th
I thought about what Dr. Mitch told me as I sat on that cold exam table, trying to compose myself in a revealing cotton robe.  “Think of this way. You’ve lived. You’ve had a lot of experiences. And sometimes, your mind, like a computer, has to take its time to search and find the information you’re looking for.  Feel lucky.”

Girl Power, Kaunakaka'i Pier Moloka'i 2012
During my Holiday Perma-Build this January, one of my volunteers, in her mid-30s, pointed out her arm. “I just can’t believe I’m still freckling at this age!   I just shook my head at her, grabbed her hand and said, “Oh sweetie. That’s an age spot. Welcome to the club.” Then I looked at the 18 year old with the killer skin across the table and thought… this too will happen to you. And you don’t have to go through it alone.


13 comments:

Unknown said...

Gee, I don't remember it that way!

katsninelives said...

Send in a photo of you at 45, Mom!
xo

Dale said...

I LOVED what you have written here. Happy belated birthday , you make 45 look real good. I Love your silver hair, very sexy and cool. When will u be in LA? Hope to see you in 2012. Take care. Dale xx

J. Orbom said...

An enjoyable read, thanks Kat.
When I was 22, I used to beat myself up over moles I got from too much time in the sun. So silly! I was lucky to be in some sunshine. I'll be spending this summer in Hawaii and not worrying so much.
You always looked so fierce in the cafe, silver hair is badass.

Nancy said...

Being a few years ahead of you, I fully appreciate all of this. And I LOVE your hair. I am jealous of your hair. I wish mine would look so great au naturel, but it doesn't. So I continue the coloring ritual. At least for now. Anyway, I'm hopeful that as larger segments of our population age, there will be a little more respect and dignity afforded the process. In the meantime, your reflections help me remember (literally) to give myself a break.

Hope to see you very soon!
xo

Jill B said...

happy birthday, kat!!! hope it's a phenomenal year for you. 45 is a lucky number for me (my favorite baseball player wore it), and it was also a life-changing and beautiful year in my life. (which is weird, since i'm only 29 now.)

miss you and hope i'll see your face before you turn 46!

love,
j

KatyLeigh said...

I loved reading your latest blog post - so honest and wonderful and I love that about you. I also agree that your silver hair is quite foxy and dying it is so passe :)

Unknown said...

Seriously Kat, it is a wonderful blog. I don't think I actually have a picture of me at 45. Age never seemed to bother me. But I do remember when I stopped coloring my hair - when I walked up the stairs to my best friend Louise's house in Des Moines, and she opened it, looked at me and said "Why the hell are you dying your hair?" Never died it again, and you know, I love my hair just as it is!!!

Bea said...

-refuse to color my hair. Let the gray strands multiply!

Happy Belated B-day, Kat! May life be treating you very well.x

Hope-Sutton said...

You've given me something to look forward to - midlife. I always thought I was the one choosing the shape of my life, but only now with a few winks of wisdom do I realize I am a pawn in society's portrayal of what a girl "should do". What will the next 45yrs look like for me? Love you - blessings and the writing just gets better and better.

Rachel Loves Soil said...

It looks radiant!

Love this:This is the pivot point, the part where the seesaw tips to the other side.

Phil said...

A story from AP Mobile:
Gray hair's in fashion, but what about at work?

NEW YORK (AP) - Jeanne Thompson began going gray at 23. She colored her hair for years as she worked her way into management at a large Boston-area financial services company, then gave up the dye for good about a year ago. The earth didn't shake, and the 44-year-old Thompson was promoted to top management the following year. She is among a new type of gray panther, a woman who aspires to do well ...

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=yTrb46cE

LeeAnn said...

Love this Kat!! I realize I hadn't read it - it arrived just when I left for Europe = and you look gorgeous in your photos!! Okay, I need to start doing Yoga..... but look at this, Mike Wallace lived to 93, so if we live that long, look at how many years we have left!!

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