My friend Angela is reading "Water For Elephants" for her book club. She pointed out a passage where the narrator describes how different he looks in the mirror now that he is an old man in his 90s than when he was so much younger.
Angela said she felt the same thing -- a combination of anger, sadness, a questioning of how it had happened and why. She said she felt younger and different on the inside. She was not like the reflection in the mirror. I'll never forget reading a quote from Barbara Bush when she was first lady, and she said something like when she looked in the mirror, she saw a 16-year-old girl getting ready to play tennis, not the reflection shining back at her.
Angela sees the discrepancy between the inner vision of herself and her reflection as an older woman, and she doesn't like it. When I look in the mirror, I see the white thick hairs that sprouted overnight on my upper lip. I don't like what I see, but I don't think about how I've changed physically. I deal with what my reflection shows me.
I understand Angela's angst. I, too, am growing old, and I fight it. Despite our perceptions of ourselves, we both deal with the accumulation of years in the same way -- trying new things and new ways of doing some of our tried and true methods, embracing technology as finances permit, supporting old friends, seeking new ones, and reading and thinking.
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