The Art Of Maintenance
Long, long ago, when I was an adolescent staring at adults like they held the answers to the universe, I didn’t realize that they knew only a bit more than I did. Times evolve so quickly that we can’t keep up.
I stared in awe at my dad shaving, wondering why blood didn’t gush from his face as he deftly moved the double-sided razor up his shaving cream covered face. I was amazed he could give me important life lessons as his face contorted from one side to another, and he pulled his skin taut. He knew he had my attention, and I learned some important life skills during these shaving talks.
“When you start dating, order what your date looks like he will want. If he studies the coffee or tea on the menu, you order coffee. Be conscious of his resources. Not everyone has the money for a fancy meal.” I thought about this and how much I wanted the fancy meal, but I understood the principle of respecting budgetary constraints. More importantly, I knew that my dad had come from limited money, a large depression era family, and the lesson was much deeper than what I’d be eating on a date. He wanted me to understand that we all come from diverse backgrounds and that we should meet on common ground.
My mother had other goals in mind. She stressed that women were expected to look polished, sophisticated and to demonstrate poise. She must have read about great posture, because she had my sisters and me meet in our den and walk from one end of the room to the other with books balanced on our heads. If a book fell off (often!), we had to start over. She encouraged us as we stumbled the first few times. “You don’t realize how important this is now, but you will thank me one day.” We thought she was losing her mind. We were not released until we completed the task.
When I won an award at my high school and had to walk through a crowd to accept it, I fully appreciated the importance of exhibiting worthiness, my head held straight, shoulders back and down. My mom was on my mind.
Another pre-teen lesson was about glowing skin. My godmother got me to look in the mirror and drilled into me that every single day I had to clean my skin to perfection. “You will get bumps if you don’t, and every bump will leave a deep, permanent pit in your skin!” To this day, I clean my skin nightly, imagining the deep pits I hope to avoid.
Now I am into a late-in-life decade. Maintenance has become a full-time job. I race Mother Nature. I have exercises to avoid having to replace my weakened hip. They take so much time, I’m guilty of skipping these altogether. All my friends are replacing their hips. Other exercises are for reducing stress. I like meditation, but this is challenging for my racing mind. I make my attempts, excited to learn that even twenty-second breaks throughout the day have tremendous health benefits.
The drawer in my vanity which holds skin potions is crammed full. I use all the products, hoping to stave off the craggy face of the practiced sun worshiper who seeks a dark tan. The most important product is sunscreen, as I learned well when I was diagnosed with my first skin cancer in my sixties.
My dad had warned me that my “starter sunburn” each year would give me cancer. I thought he made that up, as almost no one knew this in the sixties when sunscreen was baby oil, mixed with a bit of iodine for color.
Now it is my turn to try and share with my younger relatives tips I’ve learned in life for prolonging an appearance of youthfulness and exuding a confident demeanor. I share tips for how to treat others they socialize and work with, tips like writing thank-you notes and how meaningful that is. Sometimes they look at me as though they think I came from a long-ago, now out-of-step era. I look at them with understanding because I did.
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