My next scheduled blog was supposed to have been about my taking to the road again, but something happened a few days ago that caused me to take a brief detour and post some extra thoughts today. We will be off to Europe on Thursday as planned, but in the meantime, please let me share the following with you.

I just learned that another long-time friend has passed away. Not a BFF in the traditional sense, but an overseas friend with whom I shared a past business association, mutual friends, and the exchange of Christmas cards every year for some 30 years. And the sad news started me thinking of all the people I’ve lost over the past couple of decades, and how those losses have become an all-too-common feature of my life as I grow older.

But, true to my innate, somewhat wacky nature, I try not to depress myself by dwelling too long on the sadness of those occasions. I prefer, instead, to think of the good times, and of course, the funny stuff. Stuff that was always among the topics of conversation with my actual BFFs — we called ourselves the Golden Girls of Washington — over lunch or whenever.

Like hair.

Why is it that hair always seems to grow where we don’t want it, and disappear where we would prefer to keep it? Not the hair on our legs or underarms; those, for us women at least, are superfluous, and who wants to keep shaving for the rest of her life anyway? But our scalps, which used to be kept warm by our crowning glories of blonde, brunette, black, or red tresses that we spent so much time washing, conditioning, drying, curling, brushing, and showing off, and insisting, “This? Oh, no, this is completely natural,” and which suddenly seem to become thinner and thinner each day until one morning we wake up, look in the mirror, and see looking back at us . . . YODA!

“OH, MY GOD! I’M FREAKIN’ YODA!”

So we think, if only we could pluck and transplant the unwanted follicles that have come alive elsewhere on our otherwise baby-naked bodies. Like the one that keeps reappearing just below my left nostril, that I don’t notice until it begins to tickle my upper lip when I exhale. And the slightly stiffer little hair that sprouts, time after time, from an old childhood scar on my chinny-chin-chin, despite being pulled out root and all. Or the fuzzy blonde ones on the sides of my friend’s face just in front of her ears, looking for all the world like soft sideburns. All of which send me rushing for my tweezers and magnifying mirror again.

And about that chin. When the hell did it decide to double in size and drop halfway down to my collar bone? Perhaps it’s been searching for the rest of my descending flesh, which also seems to have been on a long, slippery slope toward my swollen ankles while I wasn’t looking. I have a feeling I should have been paying attention to Jane Fonda all those years ago — not her politics, just her fitness advice. Too late now, I fear.

The aches and pains of age go without saying. Like the first time one of your group lets out an audible grunt as she sits down at the restaurant table, and the conversation immediately shifts from the latest party or theater production you attended to the best topical medication for arthritis, or the best orthopedist for that snapping sound in your hip. Or when you realize you’ve stopped bragging about your kids and are now showing off pictures of your amazing grandchildren and complaining that you can’t keep up with them. “Grunt.”

Then, of course, there’s the issue of gas. Now, I know that occasional flatulence is a natural bodily function — though obviously not one of the more attractive ones. But we’re talking today about bellies that inflate like Chinese weather balloons, then suddenly let loose — not only in the moments following a colonoscopy — but at the most inauspicious times, like the middle of Thanksgiving dinner with the entire extended family, or at opening night of the opera at the Met. (No, I’ve never been to the Met, but I have seen Moonstruck a half dozen times. Great flick.) So, for those of us who try to keep to a fairly healthy diet and avoid all the spicy and fatty foods we loved in our younger days, it’s a complete mystery. Where does it all come from? And shouldn’t there be a better way of dealing with it? Preferably in private? My mother used to blame hers on our dog Toby, though no one actually believed her. Perhaps we should all just keep a dog handy — a big English bulldog would be perfect. They just look the part.

And about shrinking. Not our hips, to which we’d love to bid farewell, but our vertical measurement. I was never even close to tall — 5’2” tops, and as a kid always in the front row in school, right where the teacher could see me sneaking the little hard cinnamon candies from my desk. So I really couldn’t spare any of the 62 inches allotted to me, and yet they’re somehow being stolen away, bit by bit. Now I can no longer even reach the bottom shelf of the overhead kitchen cabinets, or straighten a crooked picture on the wall — and for one who is ever-so-slightly OCD, that’s a real issue. Some of that loss I blame on the two operations in which all five of my lumbar vertebrae were fused, but most of it is just another of the joys of getting old. Which, as some wise old person once said, really ain’t for sissies.

For the sake of all of our waning dignities, I won’t even go into the subjects of post-menopause, prostates, incontinence, IBS, liver spots, or our libidos. Those are better left for chats with our ever-expanding lists of medical specialists, or for our interminable online research.

But on the upside, we seniors do have our memories of good times, many of which are now the subjects of my series of blogs. And of old friends — like the other five Golden Girls, who are gone now but still fresh in my mind. In order of age, oldest to youngest, they were Amelia, my sister Merna, Marilyn, Simin, and Diane: a wonderfully diverse group, yet somehow totally compatible. I was the second youngest, wedged in between Simin and Diane. We lost two to cancer, one to heart disease, one to complications from Type 1 diabetes, and one to the ravages of some pulmonary disease as a result of a lifetime of smoking. I miss them every day. And here I am, the Betty White of our namesake group, determined to make it to 100. We shall see. In the meantime, I continue to write.

As for the friend I just lost, I wish him a happy journey to the other side — assuming, and devoutly to be desired, there is one. And wishing myself all sorts of heavenly reunions in the (hopefully not-too-near) future, I remain, until next time,

Brendochka
2/4/23