BIRTHDAY IN NEW ORLEANS

Hope for the Best and Blow Out the Candles
By
Debbie Lindsey
Burdened with fear and trepidation, I approach my next birthday. It’s a big one. No, not forty, I saw that harbinger of sagging buttocks a while back. And I’m not talking about the Big Five O that made my drooping backside seem trifling. Nor fifty-five, when arthritis seemed to be making its way right into my fingernails and eyelashes. My milestone is FIFTY-SIX -- this is the number that stymies me.
Go check out the greeting card department; there are no special ones for 56. It would seem that by the time we reach this number we are supposed to have acclimated ourselves to the whole “fifty something” thing. But, make no mistake we will be reminded again of our mortality and freakish age spots at sixty as there are plenty of “Happy Birthday Geezer” cards for that decade.
When did this dance (attended by stiff joints and sensible shoes) with mortality begin? When and why did my body go south? After the ten thousandth back-breaking food tray was hoisted above my head while covering twenty miles of restaurant floor tiles per day? Is it the arthritis that runs in my family? Menopause? Yes to all the above, but actually it began the day I was born. You know, the first day of the rest of your life, which simply means that downward spiral towards the last day of your life. Menopause is actually the real icing on the fallen cake. Don’t get me wrong, I now enjoy winter with zest. Empowered by hot flashes, I take to my porch in the dead of winter, barefoot, cloaked only in my nightgown and sweat buckets with abandon. The down side being summer: there is no air conditioner on the face of the Earth designed to comfort us women of a certain age during August. (At work, Dawn, my co-working friend of compatible age, and I take turns surreptitiously lowering the thermostat until it attempts to cool us at a near comfortable 49 degrees.)
Recently a young friend complained about a particularly rotten time-of-the-month she was suffering through. Wise sage that I am (not to mention rather mean-spirited and jealous) I told her it could be worse and to appreciate her monthly confrontation with her uterus as one day her estrogen will pack its bags and take leave. She seemed comforted by the prospect until I told her that then her bones would become brittle, her skin would thin and resemble a cheap veneer of leather, all her hair, everywhere, would gray, and of course her vagina would dry up.
Scaring the bejesus out of younger friends is a fun filled perk, but choose your moments judiciously, portraying yourself as an older sister with instructive advice -- and try not to laugh. Remember! You will need these younger friends for their brut strength – twist top wine bottles are hell on arthritic hands.
I use most of my body’s traitorous antics as fonder to amuse my customers as I channel a Joan Rivers without the face-lift. I can flap my outstretched winged arms and croon “Fly Me to the Moon” to my captive audience or belt out “ We’re Havin’ a Heat Wave” and every woman over forty in the restaurant will fan themselves and perspire in sync. We of a certain age bond with every drop of sweat. We are a sisterhood of ever expanding waistlines.
But aging is not all fun and games. At fifty your doctor wants you to enjoy the expense and humiliation of a colonoscopy (albeit a potentially lifesaving experience), bone scans, an EKG (this one is truly important as heart disease has surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of death among women), and before long they’ll be asking you what year is it and who is the current president.
But seriously, if you take these tests and pass, you will feel younger – no amount of Botox can equal the euphoria of a clean bill of health. Ignorance is not bliss – sometimes merely changing one’s life style can reverse a poor test result.
I am blessed with an inner-child whose age ranges between eight and twelve. This part of me that is still a kid is my fountain of youth -- and we all have this bit of our former self inside us. Some refuse to listen to the “come out and play” voice that is pleading for us to embrace life. In my opinion, the state of boredom is the leading cause of old age and is self-induced. There is no excuse not to participate in life -- short of being in a coma.
A friend recently told me he’d forgotten it was his birthday until he looked at the expiration date on some tired looking chicken parts in his refrigerator. He and the chicken shared a common date – and on the occasion of his birthday his cellophane wrapped poultry hit the garbage pail. Next year I will make sure that he is reminded with birthday cards instead of a chicken’s obit.
Humor is my best defense against aging (although some might suggest a face-lift) but there are rules and good form to follow, for aging is a very personal and heartfelt experience.
Age-ism is one of the worst of the “isms”. The word “old” can turn on a dime and from the wrong lips, do great harm. A person’s worth is diminished every time someone younger uses the “O” word as a descriptor. I overheard a young waitress once reference a customer’s request with: “That old man over there needs a refill of ice tea”. Apparently she saw no other way to point out the tall ice tea sipping guy in a bright yellow shirt with a straw pork-pie hat seated at table 12 with his birthday cake blazing before him and his friends loudly singing “Happy Birthday Harry”. I guess she just didn’t notice his handle-bar moustache.
You might think I am overly sensitive. But, can one ever be too sensitive to another’s feelings? Remember, you too will enter Geezer Land soon enough.
Oh yeah, I can say words like geezer and old fart but don’t you dare let me hear you call that sweet lady walking cautiously slow down the steps any such word. You have to own it to use it and even then there are hidden risks involved in the self-effacing use of negative words. There is a thin line between the humor in which I wrap certain words and the insidious wearing down of self-esteem that those very words have upon me. If I say “God I’m getting old!” enough times, I will surely come to feel that way.
So maybe I have just talked myself into a celebration this November on the occasion of my fifty-sixth birthday. And I will invite my foolhardy alter ego, the kid that still rides her bike with her arms in the air and swings at the playground to the amazement of little kids who think they see only a middle-aged lady with gray hair and laughter flying in the breeze.