Homesick

by Evelyn Block

Wisdom and maturity are not the way I want to go with this. I want to whine and complain and I want it fixed. Yes. I guess in a sense it can be fixed, but it’s sort of like putting a band-aid on a bullet hole. The truth gets out. You can buy a pretty face again, yours but better looking, or a brand new and improved version, but they don’t do anything about the crepe-y neck and the thin-skinned blue veined hands. No magic yet available for those. Even the feet sort of swell up and spread so you look more like a waddling duck than a graceful woman. Everyone bashes the people who get plastic surgery while clandestinely wishing they had the guts, money, pain threshold, honesty or whatever it takes to go do it themselves. At thirty-three I was still proofed entering a bar. Now I can go almost anywhere and be totally invisible. Ma’am? I still look around when someone calls me that! And why do they always think I’m shopping for someone other than myself?

I really, really am thankful that I am healthy. I know enough people with high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, whatever, to recognize how lucky I am. I can be mature and appreciative. I would just like to do it in a younger body; a body that matches the place my head got stuck at, a younger body.

I’m not being overly greedy here. Once, when I was in my twenties, I sat in a room where we were all told to close our eyes and raise our hands if there was a part of our own bodies we disliked. I’ve always hated my thighs, so up went my hand. When we opened our eyes, every hand in the room was up. I got it. I get it. I certainly wasn’t perfect then and I’m not seeking perfection now. Just fewer wrinkles that make my mouth turn down and my kid ask, “Are you mad at me”?

The disconnect between my brain and body is like a learning disability. Often, a learning disability is diagnosed when scores are high in one area and very low in another. I think young. I look old. A real disconnect. And I am not adapting well. Remedial Life 101 is what I need.

There’s shopping. We know middle-aged women have the most disposable income of any cohort, Logic says we could drop into a store and fit our expanded hips or wrinkled midriff or creepy shoulders into clothes that would drape beautifully and make us look attractive but no, what are the stores selling? Midriff length tops, ass bearing skinny jeans and don’t even say the word “thong” in my presence, thank you. I tried on a pair of those two hundred dollar skinny jeans. The circumference of the thigh space fits my calf. And stops there, Goes no further. I presume that if they put enough fabric in there to surround middle-aged thighs the price would likely double. But, listen here; clothing companies, no price is too dear for a good-looking pair of jeans. And no, thank you, please don’t send me to Chico’s or Fat Legs or Not Your Daughter’s Jeans. My head, you see, hasn’t morphed sideways from the middle the way my middle has. And my head likes cool fashions. Fortunately, I have the good sense not to torture people looking at me, thus I don’t wear the latest styles.

My sister, at sixty-plus still admires herself in the mirror wearing a bikini. I think I know her problem. Cataracts, How else to explain it? Yes, she still has a good shape, but really girl, old is old. What she doesn’t yet know is that as soon as her eyesight is fully restored, she’ll see what the rest of us have been looking at. She’ll think all those wrinkles appeared overnight. We see them now. Not so pretty, get a one piece, girl.

Yeah, yeah, wisdom’s good. Yes, in many ways I am more comfortable with myself than I was at 20, 30, 40, or even 50, but damn it, I want that face and body back!

“Oh, god, this girl is so vain,” is probably going through your mind right about now. Not so. Maybe so, I don’t know. I think I’m expressing what we all feel but we know is not politically correct. Speaking of politically correct, Look at Hillary Clinton. Does anyone know or care what color suit or tie Obama or McCain are wearing or their haircuts? Have pity on the poor woman already. She is middle aged. She can’t fit into Chelsea’s jeans. So she wears pantsuits and the press has a field day making fun of her. Hey, you idiots, my guess is she isn’t so fond of the orange pantsuits herself. So somebody go make this poor woman some attractive, comfortable clothing to campaign in for 18 hours a day and then we can talk about the issues.

And the brain inside the head. Not exactly the same, either. Whose kid hasn’t turned to them and said, “Do you have Alzheimer’s”, or, as my son used to call it, “Old-timer’s”? We forget. Get over it. Too much information to carry around when we’re busy obsessing about looks, numbers, passwords, shopping lists, where are the keys, and on and on. And thank you, but no; I don’t want to play a Nintendo Wii game created by some teenybopper to exercise my brain. It is what it is.

I read a really great line recently. It said, “Homesickness is not missing home but missing life already lived.” I think that may sum it up. I want to go home. But, as Thomas Wolfe once said, “You can’t go home again.”