There is an ageing population here in Malta. I include myself in that category! However, there is also a proportion with massive disposable incomes, and many of them invest in cosmetic surgery, facial treatments and laughably expensive creams in order to roll back the remorseless ageing process. It is certainly the deterioration in the facial region that jumps out at me when looking in a magnifying mirror or wearing really strong reading glasses.
I know it can be distressing to see the reality of one’s aged face. Have you, like me, looked up in a lift and been appalled by the harassed, cross old woman glaring back from the mirrored interior?
There are coping strategies that do not include cosmetic surgery or expensive creams. Mine is not to wear glasses, which creates a sort of soft haze of uncertainty about what actually exists. It’s almost an aspect of special relativity, where the glasses create a different frame of reference that includes length contraction (finer wrinkles) and time dilation (a more youthful appearance). Mind you, only in my frame of reference does that reality exist. It does not affect or impact what others may see. But one has to factor in that other important superpower acquired with age: our cloak of invisibility.
I remember, as an adolescent, getting into my swimsuit on the beach beneath a huge beach towel with much difficulty. My mother asked the wounding question, “Who is looking at you?” She was undoubtedly right, but the younger me smarted under this perceived insult. Now, I recognise it as a fundamental truth.
No one is looking at me, provided I don’t wear my pants on my head, put my clothes on inside out or leave the house in my slippers. I must, in all honesty, also confess to committing two out of the aforementioned three mistakes in the last year. One needn’t dwell on such things. My memory, like the elasticated waist of my trousers, can shrink and expand at will.
Gone are those adolescent years when embarrassing mistakes caused flashbacks, trauma and many tears, even when remembered months later. I have grown kinder to this older, flawed self. I can giggle over small mistakes, try to cover up the larger ones and generally beam at the world with good-natured intention.
Strangers have become universally kinder to me. I am offered seats on buses, and people even offer me their arm when I gingerly step off. Drivers lower the bus to aid my entry and exit without being asked. It sometimes feels as if the bus is kneeling and paying homage to all my infirmities and weaknesses.
At such times, I am reminded of those parts of the world where the elderly face poverty, hunger, disease and neglect. Famines and wars add to the misery and agony of their old age. Forced displacement and refugee camps cause much suffering, and perhaps we should all, like the buses, lower ourselves in recognition of their pain.
