"for a woman of your age and size"...

Years ago (quite a few) when I lived in Tucson, I was at a doctor's appointment, having my blood pressure taken as part of the exam. I asked the young woman who took it if those numbers were good, or what. "Not bad," she replied, "for a woman of your age and size." The snot-nosed little wench! Now a couple of decades older and a couple of sizes larger, those issues are with me more than ever.

I remember when I was a teenager, hearing my dad and his sisters bemoan the insults of middle age. I felt mildly sorry for them at the time, then with a toss of my shining acres of hair, forgot all about them and ran lightly off on long, tan legs. I had places to go, life-ruining choices to make.

But now, I so get it! Vision, for example. I got contacts at age fourteen and wore them for forty years. (Well, not continuously..I took them out at night). I wore them through camping trips, through dust storms, through all manner of agonizing, eye-watering situations, all in the cause of Looking Good. Then, it got to be such a hassle, finding reading glasses every five minutes, even though I had eight or ten pairs all over the house. It got to where I needed to put on the reading glasses to see my plate clearly, then take them off to look up at my lunch companion. I checked into Lasik and decided against it because I was unwilling to give up my very close vision. So at 55, I just gave up and started wearing bifocals full time. Just one more in a long line of little capitulations.
"
What has this to do with art?" you may ask. "It smacks a little of the gut-spilling you claim to abhor." Well, here's what. It's that my clay women tend to have smooth, wrinkle-free skin, full, pouty lips, firm jawlines, and eyes that gaze pensively inward, unaided by corrrective lenses. Maybe it's part nostalgic memory. (Ah, Memory! There's fodder for another post some day!) Maybe it's sort of an attempted self-portrait of my soul, without the distraction of how I actually look now. Maybe it's just the only way I know how to do it, or the fact that I can make the clay look more or less how I want it to, which I can't do with my body.


Carried in Memory
Queen of Coins
Summertime

Don't get me wrong. I see beauty in people of all ages, sizes and descriptions. I just get the feeling that there will continue to be many emotional adjustments to changing physical realities. I visited my 89-year old Aunt Dene yesterday. She is limited by health issues, and told us she "hates being like this." But her white hair was such a beautiful color, and so soft around her face. Her skin was still lovely, and her hands, long and delicate, were beautiful. (I remember thinking she hadn't spent a lot of time with them in clay and plaster and cleaning Bondo off them with harsh solvents). She had lost some of her famous fiestiness, but was softer, gentler, more appreciative. I felt closer to her in some ways than ever before, and found her beautiful.



Why is it so much harder to see one's own beauty, I wonder?