I never truly realized that getting old would bring about so many undesirable changes in my body.  Some of these things started for me in middle age, but it just continues as I become older.  My mother, now ninety years old, warned me about some of these realities, but I didn’t pay much attention until they started to happen to me.

The first examples of these unwanted consequences of the passing years, started with hair.  It began to grow in some areas and become more sparse in others.  Some turned grey, some became white, while others disappeared altogether.  

The hair on my head started expanding exponentially onto my face.  Whiskers started to grow.  Eyebrows changed shape and became multicolored.  I now have at least three different colors of hairlike growth all over my head.

The part I hate the most is the facial hair in front of my ears.  You read it right, in front of my ears!  And it appears overnight.  It’s not there before I go to bed, but in the morning, it has already sprouted.  And it is white, and long!  I am dumbfounded by the rapid growth.  How is it possible?

Moving on to the rest of my body, I now have mole-like nodules all over the place, some of which propagate their own tendrils.  Will it never end?  And blood-red spots, like freckles have appeared on my skin.  There are some of these that wiggle, and skin tags that bleed when they accidentally get scratched.  Age spots and other growths seem to think it’s alright to join the congregation.  Who asked them?

Cellulite, aches and pains, wrinkles and waddles all join in the fun of changing the once perfect bodies of infants into elderly ones. Being a woman, I don’t have to deal so much with the ear and nose hair that men do, but there are plenty of crosses for all of us to bear.

I guess the bright side of all this is that we can choose to see this as a time for letting go of this body that we all will eventually shed.  Having it break down around us makes it easier.  And maybe it allows us time to reflect on the parts of us that matter the most.  It’s the inside of us, our minds, our hearts, and the spirit that lives on, beyond this earthly existence, that determines who we are.  That’s where our dignity remains intact.  The rest is merely a facade.