The signs were unmistakable. At first, I was too busy to notice them. Finally I could not ignore them because they were too frequent and too numerous.
The special, tender way I am treated by my family, as if I am a fragile being who might disappear any moment, and not the slow-moving, fast-talking human that I am. Young people, security guards and fellow faculty members who insist on carrying my bags as I toil up three flights of stairs. Complete strangers grabbing my hand-carried luggage as I huff up and down airplane ramps. Students who hang on to, and write my every word as if these were my very last.
The physical signs are even more persistent. More aches and pains. Colds and coughs which refuse to go away despite vaccinations and tons of pills. More trips to the doctors. More laboratory examinations. More unsolicited health advice, alternative medications and food supplements from concerned friends. Yes, the signs are all there. I am an old lady journeying to what my friends laughingly describe as the “pre-departure area.”
The never-ending search for the fountain of youth
Humans have always been obsessed with youth and beauty. Literature, music and poetry are filled with accounts of people who willingly sold their souls just to stay young. The search for the fountain of youth is never ending.
Kerima Polotan has written scathingly about the desperate and oftentimes ridiculous efforts of women (and lately, men) to find the fountain of youth. She wrote during the 1970s but her words still aptly describe this frenzied search.
“There’s a universal conspiracy to do everything about old age except accept it…. A hundred kinds of creams, cakes, potions, powders, pads, bands, garters glut the market—to keep your skin moist, preserve your muscle tone, pull up your bust and all your assorted whazzizes, and if anyone were to take all these beauty worries seriously, she could never get the business of living started. Neck? Chin? Elbow? Kneecap? Knuckles? Scalp? Teeth? And so on—I wonder now, in my unpowdered old age as I did in my unpowdered youth, if the average woman…has all the time for this checklist and still get to read the editorials, clean her children’s ears, polish the silver and put out the garbage.”
Read on: “I once called on a millionaire’s wife and was told to come back because she was having her hips ‘done…’ I gathered that at regular intervals she had other parts of her done. Her hair went to the parlor, her dentures to the dentist, her contact lenses to the optician; a chiropodist, a voice teacher, a diction expert, a swimming instructor, a yoga-judo-karate practitioner came and went, creating a jam at her front door. In time she added a psychiatrist to her list….”
Nowadays anyone, man or woman, does not have to go to Switzerland or even Bangkok. There is a clinic in every corner manned by doctors bogus or real, guaranteeing youth for the right price. Why, one can even get back one’s virginity!
Why not the fountain of age?
As an unabashed promdi, I was fortunate to grow up in a community where old age was expected and welcomed. It was not an enemy one fought against. By the time I went to the city, I was too busy to notice the passage of time. Life was too challenging and wonderful to worry about wrinkles, gray hair and increased weight. Friends nagged me about blackening my hair, tattooing my eyebrows and westernizing my nose and eyes.
In 1993 Betty Friedan wrote on “the fountain of age.” She discovered that this fountain is easier to find, is less expensive and gives more joy. She learned that everywhere, men and women above 60 were discovering new knowledge, engaging in exciting activities well into their seventies and nineties. She quotes a 74-year-old retiree whose productive life spanned three careers: “the adventure continues and will continue as long as the energy flows, and as one continues being involved…. All this talk about people losing neurons of their brains in age, all that’s really about is people closing doors on all the sources of energy that open up with new ideas and hopes and feelings. I believe the essence of life is change.”
There you have it. The fountain of youth or the fountain of age?
