Change and the Art of Aging

By Karin

For the last five or six years, or roughly since I turned 30, I've been noticing little physical changes in myself. Nothing drastic, mind you—a slight slowing of the metabolism, a few fine lines fanning out around my eyes, and other subtle indications that I'm moving through time as I live—that each day, for good or bad, leaves its inevitable mark.

All during my late teens and twenties my body seemed to me a stable, reliable friend. Muscle tone and slimness were a gift, and I never needed to work out or do yoga to stay in decent shape, like I do now. While I've never been what you'd call athletic, it seemed like my body could always easily do what I asked of it: all-night cramming sessions in college; long, uphill hikes in the Catskills; the daily climb up six flights of stairs to my apartment in New York City. Intellectually, yes, I knew I would someday start to feel the effects of age, but on a purely emotional level it seemed like the most unlikely thing in the world.

Well, it's begun to happen. Not since I went through puberty has my body undergone so much change, so quickly. At first I found it fascinating—I loved watching those lines around my eyes appear in the mirror when I caught them off guard by suddenly grinning. But now they're there all the time, and as the process has begun to accelerate I sometimes feel like I'm on a runaway train. Bound who knows where.

And I think that's what frightens me most about the idea of growing older. There's a little of that “obsession with youth” people talk about mixed in: the effect of our culture's glorification of all things young and firm. But when I really examine my ambivalence about my own aging, I find that it's basically just a new version of the same old fear I've always had, that most of us share: a fear of change. Because I don't know exactly who I'll be in fifteen years, it frightens me a little to see signs of that person appearing in the mirror instead of the face I've grown so used to. To see the roadmap of her approach on the lines of my face can be utterly disconcerting.

So what's the solution? I admit I have no idea. Women's magazines talk about the wisdom gained with experience, the distinguished look of well-maintained older women and reassurances that you can still wear jeans at 80s—platitudes designed to try to cheer us up about our future selves, which seem like just a subtle way of saying that there really is something wrong with growing older, that it's not the ideal state. I prefer to deal with it the same way I deal with my fear of other kinds of change: by trying to find courage in myself, and trying to have faith in the process. After all, as alone as I sometimes feel, I'm far from being the first person in the universe ever to grow older.

I wouldn't give up the life I have now and go back fifteen years ago for anything. Back then I was scared of the future, too. It was different, though: the choices often seemed overwhelmingly abundant, whereas now they often feel to few. But the root was the same: I simply didn't know who I'd be in fifteen years' time, and that frightened me. And yet, to my never-ending amazement, it has somehow all worked out okay. That person I was and I, we're still friends. So when I see the person I will be looking back at me in the mirror, I try to remember that. And I try my best to smile at her in welcome.

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To mark and celebrate the passage of time, I make calendar necklaces. Each necklace is a string of 365 beads, representing all the days of the year. I mark special days like birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, even solstices and full and new moons, with beads that seem to match the occasion or somehow represent the person associated with that day. The necklaces make wonderful Christmas gifts. The necklace shown represents the year 2002. I used clear glass beads for ordinary weekdays, blue glass for weekends, black stones and freshwater pearls for new and full moons, and a variety of colored glass and stone beads for special occasions.