Phoebe Kate

My mother-in-law, upon occasion, ends up as the unwitting (and unsuspecting) subject of my humorous posts (such as here and here and here and here and here and here).  I swear if she wasn’t so damn funny, she’d drive me totally bonkers.

And I swear if she knew I was writing this stuff about her, she’d call her attorney tomorrow and have my name expunged from her will, then go and systematically remove any photos of me from the family albums.  She takes herself seriously — very seriously.  Which, of course, is why she’s a hoot and a half, as we say in the South.

Today she called me up and chatted so long that I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom twice.  She only got to the funny part at the very end of the conversation, when I was on the verge of pouring myself a medicinal shot of bourbon to keep up my strength.

“I have…some news,” she said in an ominous tone.

Oh dear, I think.  Who’s died that she just now remembered to tell me about?  I tentatively inquire, “Bad news?”

“Oh yes,” she replies. 

“How bad?”

“Very bad.”

To be honest, the only relatives she’s got left are people she doesn’t particularly like — so I figure that’s not the gloomy information forthcoming.  So now I think it’s something to do with her health.  She went to the doctor and he gave her a bad report.  She’s terminally ill.  She’s got Alzheimers.  She’s got something so awful that they can’t even diagnose it. 

“What is it?” I ask, prepared for the worst and ready to be Brave & Beautiful in her hour of need.

“My arms…” she sighs.

“What about your arms?”  I’m thinking paralysis, neurological disorders, a wasting disease.

“They’re — they’re — ”

“They’re what?”

“My arms are getting shorter!”  

I burst out laughing.

“This is nothing to laugh about!” she retorts indignantly.  “Today I tried on the suits I used to wear a few years ago and now the jacket sleeves hang down over my hands.  It’s like wearing someone else’s clothes!  I’ve spent the entire day hemming them up — you have no idea how exhausted I am!  I should never have sent those suits to that new dry cleaner — he did something funny to them.”

She knows full well why her sleeves hang down now halfway to her knees.  At 92, she’s lost several inches of height and every other part of her anatomy has merrily become a co-conspirator in shrinkage, too.  But hell, it’s easier to blame the dry cleaner than admit you’re getting old.

No, not getting old.  Are old.

At the same age my mother-in-law is now, her own mother used to stand in front of mirrors and the polished stainless steel of her toaster, surreptitiously pull her face back with her fingers (pretending to pat her hair in place) and smile with great content as she proclaimed, “I look just the same as I did at 20!” 

Now that lady knew how to deal with contrary and disagreeable reflective surfaces.

Aging is not a pleasant process.  I’m not enjoying it one little bit.  It’s interesting to observe the process objectively, but this isn’t a lab rat or an anonymous individual in a clinical study you’re looking at it here but your own self – and that’s disconcerting.  I am thankful for what wisdom I have gained in being around for half a century now, but the very words “half a century” make me wince.  I grew up in the 60s, where the popular catchphrase was, “Don’t trust anybody over 30.”

Sheeesh!  I’ve now been, by my own generation’s assessment, categorically untrustworthy for over 20 years.  How depressing that our casual youthful words come back to haunt us later.   

However, I think my mother-in-law unwittingly expressed a great truth about aging.  It is like wearing someone else’s clothes — and having someone else’s body and someone else’s face, too, which is even scarier.

All we can hope, as the years pass, is that we remain us, our truest and best selves, inside — in our hearts and minds and souls, the only place where it really counts.      

~ phoebe kate