I know why old people have that certain look on their face. It is a knowing look, a resignation. They sit on a park bench or city seat with a look on their face that reflects faces of people they've known in the past, like all the expressions have taken up residence in the fine cracks on their skin and in the look in their eyes.
They watch young people dart pass, gleefully unaware that the people who they love right now, people they loathe right now and others in their lives, whether they like it or not, are going to return to them as flashes of memory. Ghosts, like the pungent odour of garlic on the breath or onion on your fingers, continue to exert their power and presence.
I am not quite that old. The kind of old that makes you totally resigned to your fate and the things around you. An oldness that makes you walk so slowly that those watching wonder whether you are really going anywhere, except down to the shops with your carry bag in one hand and your purse in another and then back home again with a litre of milk and a fresh new loaf of bread that will last for days, because you live alone. The bread will only be half-eaten because mold will form on the crusts and you won't cut it off and eat the salvaged bread, even to save money. Milk is quite heavy to carry when you are old!
I'm talking here about an oldness that has crept into your bones and your muscles, that tells you, you are no longer strong; fierce wind can easily move you so much so, that you have to hold onto a pole to stop from falling. An oldness that makes you vulnerable to heat and cold, a state of being that makes you look suspiciously at younger, energetic people, who eat fast food and who are always loud and excited, on the move, talking endlessly on their mobile phones. An oldness that makes you move your body quickly sideways (and that's not easy) to avoid small children in the tram who swing their legs around wildly and who threaten with each move to kick your delicate, delicate shins.
I am old enough that ghosts - memories of the past are beginning to invade my thoughts and things in my home. I can tell because they constantly assert themselves. I am here. You can almost hear them saying it. There they are, all the ghosts of the past. I'll sit with that for a moment.
Yes, ghosts are not only people from the past, for their faces are no longer distinct; ghosts are the feelings that surround events, the minutia of life, the dust that always settles on the sideboard even though you dusted two days ago, the fact that your fingernails grow so quickly, but you never notice until they are suddenly long. So, ageing is about time and the way if flows or escapes you!
When did my nails grow long again, didn’t I spend time the other night cutting and filing them and thinking that I might paint them with bright red nail polish? Well - perhaps not red, but something pink and unobtrusive that tells the world I am sensible and middle-aged. As if the two somehow go together.
‘I see that you are wearing your nails, natural?’ says the young female sales assistant in the city centre. 'I have a nail buffer that will make them shine brilliantly’. You know that this is about her making a sale of some new product. Of course it will work, but she doesn't know that I'm not an easy target for her 'sweet to the customers' smile. I held out my hand and she shines one nail until it looks out of place amongst all the others, which now seem so terribly dull and lack luster.
They watch young people dart pass, gleefully unaware that the people who they love right now, people they loathe right now and others in their lives, whether they like it or not, are going to return to them as flashes of memory. Ghosts, like the pungent odour of garlic on the breath or onion on your fingers, continue to exert their power and presence.
I am not quite that old. The kind of old that makes you totally resigned to your fate and the things around you. An oldness that makes you walk so slowly that those watching wonder whether you are really going anywhere, except down to the shops with your carry bag in one hand and your purse in another and then back home again with a litre of milk and a fresh new loaf of bread that will last for days, because you live alone. The bread will only be half-eaten because mold will form on the crusts and you won't cut it off and eat the salvaged bread, even to save money. Milk is quite heavy to carry when you are old!
I'm talking here about an oldness that has crept into your bones and your muscles, that tells you, you are no longer strong; fierce wind can easily move you so much so, that you have to hold onto a pole to stop from falling. An oldness that makes you vulnerable to heat and cold, a state of being that makes you look suspiciously at younger, energetic people, who eat fast food and who are always loud and excited, on the move, talking endlessly on their mobile phones. An oldness that makes you move your body quickly sideways (and that's not easy) to avoid small children in the tram who swing their legs around wildly and who threaten with each move to kick your delicate, delicate shins.
I am old enough that ghosts - memories of the past are beginning to invade my thoughts and things in my home. I can tell because they constantly assert themselves. I am here. You can almost hear them saying it. There they are, all the ghosts of the past. I'll sit with that for a moment.
Yes, ghosts are not only people from the past, for their faces are no longer distinct; ghosts are the feelings that surround events, the minutia of life, the dust that always settles on the sideboard even though you dusted two days ago, the fact that your fingernails grow so quickly, but you never notice until they are suddenly long. So, ageing is about time and the way if flows or escapes you!
When did my nails grow long again, didn’t I spend time the other night cutting and filing them and thinking that I might paint them with bright red nail polish? Well - perhaps not red, but something pink and unobtrusive that tells the world I am sensible and middle-aged. As if the two somehow go together.
‘I see that you are wearing your nails, natural?’ says the young female sales assistant in the city centre. 'I have a nail buffer that will make them shine brilliantly’. You know that this is about her making a sale of some new product. Of course it will work, but she doesn't know that I'm not an easy target for her 'sweet to the customers' smile. I held out my hand and she shines one nail until it looks out of place amongst all the others, which now seem so terribly dull and lack luster.
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