“Any birthday is preferable to the alternative, dear daughter.”
This from my mother when I called her to bellyache about my upcoming “big day.” I’d hoped for a little sympathy since I’m turning forty … something. (You thought I’d tell didn’t you? I bet you think Brittany’s getting her kids back, too.) But no, she took a hard line when I complained about my smile lines and demanded I consider my crow’s feet from the French perspective. Puhleeze.
(The French, for those of you who’ve yet to be treated to this fountain of youth factoid, consider forty the old age of youth, and fifty the youth of old age. I consider a bottle of wine and a baguette at each meal thought muddying. But that’s just me.)
Desperate to forget my crinkly eyes, wrinkled brow, and the parentheses punctuating my mouth, I raced into my Jazzercise class. I would not go gently into that good night. I would disco, disco against the dying of the light!
At least that was the plan until the class manager greeted me with the words, “Susan, you expired yesterday.”
So that accounts for my sudden, overwhelming urge to lie prone in something pine.
Ninety-two bucks later my membership was renewed (delaying, by the miracle of modern checking, my expiration by muscle atrophy—not to mention Juvederm overdose—for another two months), and I dashed from the Jazzercise center to the eye doctor. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Things were fuzzy, out of focus. I actually had trouble writing out my check; not an affliction I’ve ever suffered from no matter how many novenas my husband’s made.
I was freaking when I plopped down in the big chair, eye-balled the big E, and cried, “Doc, I think it’s the big C.” To which my wonderful optometrist (who just happens to have a whole Owen Wilson in “You, Me, and Dupree” thing happening which cracks me up, which in turn makes him say “Please sit still,” every two seconds, which ultimately proves that yes, you can only be young once but you can be immature forever) replied, “Relax, Susan. It’s not cataracts. You’re just ready for readers.”
