Today–my birthday–I have to admit: my body is looking older. A friend says you know you’re fifty when your mother’s hand slides out of your sweater. I brush my hair, but it doesn’t swing heavy like it did just a few years ago. I could handle the color damage by shaving it off to a punk gray stubble. But no–with my cellulite belly and full breasts, I’d look like a lumpy sumo wrestler without a shred of chic.
I admit it: I buy hippie beads, cut-off overalls and mascara to fashion a youthful illusion. All these subterfuges cost more than what I wore when young and thin, but that’s to compensate for my mother’s skin on my shins.
My aging single sisters agree with me: people can’t even see us now. We’ve disappeared: dumpy, unloved, middle-aged. Many of us are firmly moral–TV, Harlequins, and Bill-and-Monica notwithstanding–so we don’t go scouting, eyes sharp with hunger, for any affair. Our skim of wrinkles and sag at the neck conceal the same desire we had when young: a mate to love us, whole and soul, forever.
The odds aren’t good; we acknowledge that. Still, we turn over at night, arms around the pillow, slipping into hopeful sleep. “If I exist,” I murmur, “then he exists.” It could be, you know–a mate no longer sole, with his own stubble, sending out his long-distance invitation: even if it’s your mother’s hands, I know it’s you.