Happy Birthday To Me

Today is my birthday.

I'm forty-three.

I cannot believe it.

My mum encouraged me to relish my forties because, in her opinion, these are the times when we generally have a few bucks, a bunch of experience and still look and feel pretty good. I'd say that's a fair characterization.

And the truth is, I'm loving my forties. They've been very good to me so far.

With that said, I do have a few complaints, namely the decay.

Where did my eyesight go? Wasn't it just yesterday that I could effortlessly thread a needle or read the label on a pill bottle? Nothing symbolizes the aging process quite like the acquisition of one's first pair of bifocals. I can't express how much it pisses me off to have to put on a pair of readers to make sense of the small print.

And how about the body changes? Boobs making a southern pilgrimage, spider veins, wild hormonal fluctuations and hair. Without the benefit of regular waxing, you could stick a cigar in my mouth and call me Groucho Marx.

As a teenager, I used to flip through the fashion magazines and wonder if women really bought those anti-aging creams that promised to erase the hands of time.

"What a scam", I remember thinking.

Today, I am an AVID consumer and in my bathroom, I have very specialized concoctions. Besides the Retin-A, I have a tube of stuff that promises to lighten the black circles under my eyes. I have concentrated eye serum. I have one cream for the daytime with SPF and one for the night which promises to slake my thirsty skin. I have this pencil-like applicator which delivers a concentrated "plumping" lotion to the deepening crevices between my brows and around my mouth. I am a newly crowned BOTOX queen and I'm not ashamed to admit that I do not intend to go quietly into middle age. I shall use every tool available to appear to age gracefully.

I have learned that the excesses of my youth (too numerous to detail here) are no longer much of a secret. They are etched on my face and settled into the ligaments of my knees. As each day passes, I am surprised to see my father staring back at me from the mirror. Where I once dismissed my mother's ideas about food and holistic healing (with a saucy flick of a cigarette and a gulp of some intoxicant), I now embrace them with wide open arms and a fervent desire to remain healthy.

In an interview with Oprah, Cher was once asked how she felt about aging.

"It sucks," she replied.

I suppose there's some relevance to that sentiment because honestly, who wouldn't want their twenty five year old body back? In hindsight, I'd be a lot kinder to mine. But I wouldn't want to revisit that time if it meant that I'd have to give up my experiences, paycheque or the perspective that I have now because the truth is, life in my forties is pretty damn sensational.