We are all beautiful at every age...

I find myself thinking about my grandmothers more and more often these days. Perhaps it is because I have reached the age that they were when I recall my first real memories of them. They were still vibrant and energetic but they had given up all pretense of attempting to appear younger than they were. They embraced their senior years without makeup or artificial color on their hair. Their skin was wrinkled and their eyelids drooped but they were nonetheless beautiful in their acceptance of the aging process. 

Both of them mostly wore unexciting cotton dresses with very sensible shoes, if they wore shoes at all. My Grandma Minnie Bell was an inveterate gardener and farmer who often donned khaki pants, flannel shirts and black rubber boots for cultivating her plants. She would shade her skin with a big straw hat. Everything about her style was mostly about function and simplicity. Even when she dressed for a special occasion she wore a simple frock constructed from a finer fabric than those reserved for daily work around the house and perhaps some ear bobs and a necklace but little more adornment. 

Grandma Ulrich more often than not cut the sleeves from her dresses and did her chores in her bare feet during the hot and humid Houston summer months. When the temperature fell she donned comfortable fur lined slippers and wore a wool cap on her head to stay warm in her house which was heated by gas stoves that did not always fill every corner with warmth. She wore her long hair in a braid that trailed down her back. It stayed dark black for many years before the gray began to take over. Eventually one of her daughters cut her hair to make it easier for her to brush it each morning. I have to admit that I missed that lovely braid that seemed to be her trademark. 

Neither of my grandmothers ever seemed to eat much. Ironically Grandma Minnie Bell never weighed over a hundred pounds and Grandma Ulrich was as round as an apple. They were living examples of how differently food affects people because neither of them snacked on sweets or stuffed themselves, but one held the weight more than the other. I tended to think that having ten pregnancies had a lasting effect on Grandma Ulrich that resulted in her chubbier appearance. Even with her extra weight she was a very cute grandmother. 

Both ladies became my idea of how an elderly woman should look, but styles and times changed while I was busy becoming an adult. My mother and my aunts made great efforts to remain stylish even as they entered their sixties, seventies and eighties. They took great pains in using makeup and styling and sometimes coloring their hair. They did not seem to age in appearance as quickly and easily as my grandmothers. They never fit my idea of how the quintessential older woman was supposed to be. 

Now I am that old lady and I find myself slathering my face with creams to chase away the brown spots, dark circle and wrinkles. I can only do so much but so far I have managed to stave off many of the natural processes that would give away my age. I have only touches of gray that I hide with highlights in my still brown hair. I try to keep up with stylish clothing without attempting to look way too young and silly. My biggest concession to my age has been wearing comfortable but rather ugly shoes. My feet refuse to accept the ruse that I am still a youngster. I nod to the practicality of my grandmothers when I don my rubber boots to work in my garden or walk around my home in my fur lined slippers. 

Sometimes I just want to chuck all of my efforts at staying relevant in the world of fashion by just letting go of all the efforts to fool nobody about my age. Even when I am donned with all of my glory young people offer their seats to me on the Tube in London, someone is always deferring to my age in some way. It leads me to understand that I am not fooling anyone into believing that I am a spring chicken. At such times I think of how my grandmothers gloried in adjusting to their aging bodies without attempting to cover up the signs that they were growing old. 

There is a great deal of talk about age these days. We have two men who are older than I am running for President of the United States. I do not dismiss them because of a number that tells me how old they are because I am still teaching difficult mathematics each week and keeping my mind sharp in a thousand different ways. Still, I sometimes think that not all of the hair dye and makeup in the world actually cover the signs of aging. Perhaps we would all do well to allow people to see our graying locks, our balding heads, the wrinkled hands that attest to all of our work. Those lines on our faces should be testament to all of our achievements and hard work. We are the most beautiful when we are natural and unencumbered by efforts to fool everyone that we are younger. 

We are each part of the circle of life, moving degree by degree until we connect the finishing point with the starting point at three hundred sixty degrees of living. We should enjoy the point of each age that we achieve. We should be whatever we are wherever we are on the curve, always developing and changing, adapting to life with joy.

That is how I saw my grandmothers. They were wise and beautiful women whose only goal each morning seemed to be to love. They reached outward rather than concerning themselves with themselves. They made everyone in their radius feel important and wonderful. In that regard they were two of the most beautiful women in the world and they did it without the accouterments of fashion or style. Perhaps we might all consider how lovely it would be to emulate them and spend our days enjoying the simplicity of just being ourselves with all of the gray hair and wrinkles that show the world that we have really lived. Living is what makes us beautiful.