Sandy's Say: Photoshop
…When is it exactly that one’s body goes from being an object of sexual attraction to being a fright? Nature is surreptitious at first but then she accelerates with alarming alacrity. She strikes with a cruel, double blow because just as we start shrivelling, drooping, expanding and forgetting, our children begin to enter their prime and blossom by growing taller, slimmer, firmer and smarter in an ‘in your face’ kind of way…
The inimitable Sandy James contemplates the ageing process with wry resignation.
To read more of Sandy’s superb columns please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/sandys_say/
It rained, it rained, it rained! After months of drought I was so jubilant and joyous that I wanted to celebrate by stripping my clothes off and dancing naked in the street, feeling that wonderful, life giving water all over my face and body. But then I thought I’d better not give the neighbours a fright, so I refrained.
When is it exactly that one’s body goes from being an object of sexual attraction to being a fright? Nature is surreptitious at first but then she accelerates with alarming alacrity. She strikes with a cruel, double blow because just as we start shrivelling, drooping, expanding and forgetting, our children begin to enter their prime and blossom by growing taller, slimmer, firmer and smarter in an ‘in your face’ kind of way.
I watch with envy as my son, a human consumption function on two legs, continuously pours food down his gullet and yet he remains a lean machine. I, on the other hand, have had to give up my favourite two meals which were seconds and dessert and I daren’t so much as look sideways at a glass of wine for fear of it latching onto my hips. It seems most unfair because it is at this precise time in life when one is dealing with moody, argumentative teenagers that one is often in dire need of a stiff drink.
Having lived in a sunny country all my life, it is my fair Celtic skin which has suffered the most. Besides having a ruddy, sun damaged, plucked turkey neck, I am obliged to make annual visits to a dermatologist who burns off pre cancerous skin changes with liquid nitrogen. All this scarring is unsightly and severely limits the style of clothes that I can wear. I look longingly at strappy tops and low slung evening gowns, knowing that they have now been relegated to the distant past. The word ‘matronly’ does not have a good ring to it.
I have always fought against wearing underwire bras because, to me, they are a bruising, medieval torture device but now my girlfriends tell me that we are at the age where we require nothing less than the ‘sheep dog bra’. You may well ask. It is a brassiere which rounds them up and points them in the right direction! The same friends encourage me with the depressing news that as you get older it takes more and more effort to smell and look good – hair colour from a bottle, multi dollar, multifocal glasses, feet that require savage grating with a Ped Egg, whiskery chins, very gross veins – the list is endless.
The rainy weather had driven my son indoors and to alleviate his boredom he was sifting through a box of old photos. He came across one of me on the beach in a bikini and in my absolute prime. I was eighteen at the time and trim, taught and terrific. He turned the photo round and round and studied it very closely. I waited, anxious for a rare compliment. I should have known better.
“Gee Mum,” he said. “I can see that this is your face but whose body is it?”
