Thursday, January 14, 2010

growing old, part 2

I had lunch at Sbarro today. In the next table sat two old ladies, obviously old friends, and they had been shopping. Seated a little farther away was a woman who wore something that looked like a maid's uniform. She carried various paper bags and shopping bags for the two old women.


The two old women were sharing a slice of pizza, a salad, and a carrot cake. Sbarro's servings are large by my standards. They ordered their assistant the same thing I was eating: baked ziti. One of them was instructing the woman to sprinkle some granulated garlic in her baked ziti; the other inquired if she found the food delicious. The woman politely said yes, but her face carried an expression of slight distaste.


The old women were dressed simply. They were wearing blouse and pants and flat sandals. They had also dyed their hair light brown. But their manner was very refined, and I noted that one of them wore a Rolex watch. The other had earrings with stones that sparkled too much to be anything but real. They discussed old friends and what to do in the evening.

Okay, maybe I watched them too much, but they were very interesting. It seems I am preoccupied with old women these days.

I often associate old age with being alone. I did not grow up in a household that takes care of old people. My grandmother never made us feel like it's an obligation. She lived in her big house all by herself with a caregiver for company.

I learned from her that alone doesn't necessarily mean lonely. When I get to be an old woman, I hope I still have a girlfriend or two who can go shopping with me. Said girlfriend had better be addicted to books as well, for the sake of intelligent conversation. I cannot see myself discussing the merits of a particular well-muscled DI over lunch.

I hope I will be a gracious old lady, maybe not with a Rolex, but with a few sparkly things to wear when I attend my granddaughter's debut. And I do hope I discover soon what it is with old women, light brown hair, and blouse-and-pants ensembles, so I can plan my wardrobe accordingly.


And I hope one of my daughters will marry an Italian, so I can have someone who will cook me good pasta and make a mean pizza. I cannot afford a lifestyle of eating at Sbarro every day!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

growing old

I was on my way to buy a bacon sandwich earlier when I met an old woman along the corridor. She had mostly white hair, a pale kind face, a dowdy (in my 33-year-old opinion) blouse-and-pants outfit, and flat brown sandals. She was wearing a retiree's ID, and as she passed me she smiled.

It suddenly occurred to me that I, in my short dress, braided hair and three-inch heels, would one day look like her.

I too, would retire from work. I wonder what I'd be like at 60. Of course by that time I'd have given up my high heels (oh, the prospect of it breaks my heart), but I'll still wear pretty shoes. I'd still like to wear dresses, but perhaps by that time I'll discover the wonder of slacks and tailored pants. The credit cards in my wallet will be replaced by snapshots of my grandchildren.

Here's what I'd like to be when I grow old:

I'll have a library that I'll open to public school children. I'd like to have children around me who can argue whether Tom Sawyer was smarter than Huckleberry Finn. Unlike my mother and my mother-in-law who are so fond of plants, I cannot grow gardens. Even a cactus withers under my care. So my retirement home will probably be a condo with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

I'll have a cat, of course. Maybe not a Siamese cat with an attitude, but something clean enough to bring to bed and behaved enough that my husband won't kick it out.

I will have travelled to other places, other countries. I would like to see cherry blossoms bloom in Japan, go to a safari in Africa, eat crepes in Paris while visiting my friend Monette. I wouldn't want to climb Mount Everest or ride the world's biggest roller coaster, but I'd like to have tried things that I dreamed of doing when I was in my 30s and writing blogs. He he he.

And I'll write lots of stories. By 60 I would have learned enough of the world to write about it. When I write I will leave the city; I will go to a beach, sit under an umbrella, and write with my toes in the sand. Then I'll go back to my condo and publish what I wrote.

One last thing: I will decide to like being old. Most of us (especially women) desperately fight old age. Our weapons are cosmetics, loud clothes, juvenile behavior. But that's inevitable; the wrinkles will win anyway. The important thing is to welcome each day as if you'd live to be a hundred years old, to not forget to have fun, to surround yourself with people and things you love. Because, you see, Mark Twain was right. He said, "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

Friday, January 8, 2010

the beauty queens










You see the shoes? We didn't talk about wearing the same style today. We three met for lunch to celebrate Milette's birthday. Two weeks from now we'll have lunch again to celebrate mine, and again in October to celebrate Irene's.We three friends are so different from each other. Milette is a saint, but she wears hot lingerie; Irene is a self-proclaimed pokwang and is determined not to marry, but she gives the soundest advice on marital problems; I am me. :-)

We three love books. Irene and I both love Pat Conroy, and... uh, we're not sure about what Milette loves to read.

We three work in the same building, but we eat lunch together only thrice a year. During lunch, we talk about anything under the sun, under the stars, under the blanket. We exchange views on topics that would make other women blush. And we ask the waiters to take pictures of us after lunch, in the same place, every year. For lunch today, we have 26 pictures. I guess we'll laugh about it for the next couple of days.

More than the companionship, the lunches, the gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, I love the simplicity of our friendship. I laugh a lot when I'm with them. They taught me to work more patiently on my husband, to be tough at work, to buy expensive bags and shoes. I learn a lot from them, but most of the time I learn things about myself.

We call ourselves the beauty queens. It's a private joke in the ordinariness of our everyday working lives. There is happiness in our uncomplicated acceptance of each other.

These lunch dates on our birthdays, they are not just to eat an expensive lunch together or to giggle over our sex lives. They are celebrations of our friendship, and the conviction that in our own right, in our own worlds, we are beauty queens. Because when we're 70 years old, we'll look at our albums of our lunch dates, three times a year, and we'll sigh and say,

"Shit, weren't we beautiful?"