Lady of the House
by Sharon J. O'Donnell
Aging Gracefully
As I reach my ‘mid-forties’, I find that it can sometimes be difficult to adjust to getting older. ‘Aging gracefully’ might have sounded fine and admirable to me ten years ago, but now it sounds more like a last resort. In between age 44 and say, oh, 44 and 3 months, my entire body started falling apart. Middle age sneaks up on you, quietly, like a thief in the night, robbing you of things more valuable than gold.
I was dealing with this all right until I was the recipient of one of those off-hand comments someone makes that becomes a sentence that echoes in your mind for months or maybe years afterwards. A few months ago, I was at a bridal shower for my niece when I walked over to show her future mother-in-law a photo of my 6-year-old son, who would be the ring bearer. As she was looking at it, another future in-law, one of the grandmothers and matriarchs of the family came over and peered over her shoulder. “Aww,” she said, as if she were about to say he was cute. But instead she said, “Is that your grandson?” I about choked on my miniature spinach quiche. I tried to appear unfazed by her comment, but I’m sure my face betrayed me. I felt my eyes bulge out, my mouth fall open, and my face grow hot as it turned red.
I tried to regain what was left of my composure. “Ahmmm, ahhh, no,” I stammered, “he’s my son.” Then somebody ohhed and ahhed about one of the gifts, and everyone, including these two ladies, turned to admire it. I stepped away, hoping nobody had overheard our conversation or noticed my strange reaction. But for the rest of the party, I kept to myself over in a corner, sometimes tugging at my crow’s feet, smoothing out laugh lines, or bending my neck to see how much of a double chin I had. It was all I could do not to sneak off to a closet, flip out my cell phone and call information for the number of Cary Plastic Surgery. Later when I got in the car with my mother and two sisters, I told them what had happened, and they all burst into laughter. Not an ounce of sympathy. Yet, it was comforting they found the thought of my being a grandmother comical.
I felt better until three weeks later when I was shopping at a department store for some clothes for my three growing boys. I happened to find a number of items they needed and placed the pile of clothes on the check-out counter. The cashier rang up the purchases and then said to me, “Today is Senior Citizen discount day,” in a happy tone of voice like she was telling me I’d just hit the jackpot in Vegas. She paused, holding the price scanner in mid-air as she grinned at me, expectantly.
It took me a moment, but I realized she was waiting for me to acknowledge that I was indeed a senior citizen and eligible for the discount. I was speechless. It had happened again. Tired of waiting for me to respond, she hit some keys on the cash register and said, “I’ll go ahead and give that to you.” I was now in a daze, almost a coma. She handed me my bags and receipt, saying cheerfully, “You saved sixteen dollars today.” I wanted to grab her by the collar and yell, “Who cares about sixteen bucks!?!? You just called me a senior citizen!”
Friends and family later said the cashier was just trying to be nice and gave me the discount as a favor, even though she knew I was not a senior citizen. Note to all cashiers and clerks: please don’t do me any favors. I’d have gladly paid the extra money than have to endure more age-related humiliation. These two instances have caused me to spend considerable time reflecting on the meaning of ‘aging gracefully’. I looked up the word ‘gracefully’ in the dictionary and it said, ‘elegantly’, ‘with poise’, ‘charmingly’, ‘stylishly’. Not exactly words that go hand-in-hand with aging. The antonym listed was ‘awkwardly’. When I saw the word, I realized I’d just coined a new phrase: “aging awkwardly”. Yep, that pretty much hit the nail right on the head for me. Can Geritol and Lawrence Welk re-runs be too far behind?
Sharon J.
O’Donnell is an award-winning newspaper columnist, who specializes in
humor columns. Since 1998, Sharon has been a columnist for The Cary
News, in Cary, NC (just outside of Raleigh) and has won awards for
those columns. She has also written for Good Housekeeping, The News
& Observer, and Blue
Mountain Arts greeting
cards.
Sharon
is a 1984 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(she used to live in the same dorm as Michael Jordan!!) with a degree in
print/broadcast journalism. Since then she’s worked in radio
promotions, special events planning, public speaking, and public
relations.
Her current project is a humorous book of
essays about what it’s like to be the only woman in a houseful of males,
dealing with a husband, three sons, and a male dog.
Sharon also writes fiction. In 1997,
her novel manuscript, Hand-Me-Downs, was a finalist in the Heekin
Group Foundation’s James Fellowship for the novel-in-progress division.
An excerpt from her current novel-in-progress, Bluebirds Fly, was
published in the Sunday Reader section of The News & Observer,
the Raleigh paper, in December of 2002. In the spring of 2003, she won
third place in the short story division of The Paul Gillette Memorial
Writing Contest, sponsored by the Pikes Peak Writers Conference.
Since 2000, she’s taught narrative writing through
week-long writing residency workshops in schools and is a
writer-in-residence through the United Arts Council. She has also done
public relations consulting that has resulted in successful media
coverage for various programs and events.
Jacob’s Ladder, a volunteer group she helped start in honor of
her nephew who underwent a successful bone marrow transplant in 1993,
won a national award called the HOPE award in 1997 for raising testing
money and promoting the bone marrow registry to minorities.
She lives in Cary with her husband Kevin and their three sons
ages 14, 11, and 5 (ages of this writing in late 2005).
Her Websites are
www.momsofboys.org and
www.sharonodonnell.com.
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