A Story About Change

By Doreen M McFarlane

Ah, what can a person write about in regard to CHANGE? That is the question. Too many ideas come to mind. Which would be best? Well, I could certainly have much to say about change in the way our politics are changing and the ways we here in Canada might imagine our country and our world will change and how the world could change if things don’t go well. But, enough said. I will NOT talk about politics. After all, I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the preparation required of all children was to hide under our desks if we heard a siren. Yes, seriously! And all turned out well that time!

We writers could certainly write about how our beloved English language is continually changing, and how it feels that we have little or no control over it. I do not need to talk about that either. After all, I still have one or two friends who still do not say “irregardless” and who understand that only living, breathing things can be “healthy” and that food can, in fact, only be “healthful!” I will not talk about our language; how the kids and now most people greet each other saying “Hey” instead of “Hi”, or about the phrase “no worries” which is expected to solve every problem.

OK. No politics. No grammar! This brings me to what I will talk about today. In the department of things that CHANGE, the most obvious thing is ourselves. Yes, I will stick close to home and say a few words about that. That, of course, is also upsetting. But, as we have little power to control the aging process, I choose to embrace it!

I am sure most of us can remember when we’d look in the mirror and see a rather attractive person. Oh, we found plenty of faults in our looks; some that could be changed and others that we figured we’d have to live with. For the females, we could try some makeup or a new hairstyle. For the boys, in my day, they could always slather on more Brylcreem to try to look more like a singing star or an actor. But the main thing about our looks in those days was that we looked YOUNG. We nearly always thought we looked young, too young for just about anything we thought we wanted to do. Clothes could occasionally make us appear a bit older. I acquired a little mink jacket that a friend of my mother’s had discarded. I learned quickly that, if I wore that jacket downtown shopping on Saturdays, the clerks would give me a modicum of respect— that is, until they had a closer look. One even told me, “You should not be wearing that. It makes you look like a chippie.” (A chippie, I found out, was a prostitute. So, that put a damper on any joy I had derived from looking more mature in that little jacket.)

Well, gazing in the mirror a few years later, we’d begin to see that the youth problem was certainly being resolved. No longer had we stopped looking too young than we, at least according to our own observations, started looking too old. If we were 40, we wanted to look 30. If we were 50, we wanted to look 40. Those face cream counters became attractive to us. We paid the money and tried the creams, but were never quite sure whether they were working. For many years, people would tell us we didn’t look our age at all. Then, at least in my case, I noticed that their protests that we could not be that age at all slowed and pretty much stopped.

Looking our age, you see, is about something that no face cream could help. It is about movement— how quickly we move, how confidently we sit in a chair, how we may be wheezing or breathing as if we had just shoveled the driveway when all we did was walk a few yards. It also has to do with our attitude. We may be cheerful much of the time, but on occasions, we do get caught up in taking some secret pleasure in complaining about an ache, about stiff legs, about the aging process that moves forward in us without our permission.

Aging, however, does have a few perks. I find now that I am able, when I do sit down, to relax a bit, that I am able to do so pretty much without guilt. I believe I could sit on a park bench for hours although I haven’t tried it yet. I am becoming able to feel good about the way I look for my age (though absolutely never the way I look on Zoom calls.) And most of all, I am able to much more deeply appreciate the joy there is to be found in friends (like you), in reading (or writing) a book, and in having a really good day!