Dudes.
…I’m outting my Mom. Today, she turned 60. And it’s really weird.
…Not because Mom is 60 necessarily, but that 60 isn’t remotely what it used to be -but our brains just can’t help going there in picture-processing.
My Gram, at 60, looked not only exactly like a Gram, but also, every bit of 60. It wasn’t a crime then, to be that age, for one thing. And it wasn’t a crime to look it.
Life had kinda kicked that whole generation in the ass…when you think about it…from being born in the Depression, to two back-to-back wars, raising a shit-ton of children in the Donna Reed years, through sexual revolutions, civil unrest, a bunch of assassinations, forever chain-smoking cocktail parties, and then watching their kids deal with everything from Vietnam to sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
…No wonder they looked every second their age (and sometimes, even more.)
But Mom’s generation…the ones that survived Vietnam and drugs and AIDS and free-love fall-out… they sorta flipped this switch on the aging rules, which will never flip back again. All of a sudden, they were thrown into 80’s fitness kicks and people started divorcing themselves from butter sauces and “cholesterol ” became this whole thing…as did the magnification of youth-creams and serums and face-lifts…which my generation picked up and fueled even more.
A state of social consciousness on the necessity to never grow older became this “thing.” A mother literally looking young enough to be their own daughter became some wack kind of goal in life…screwing with every time-table and half of the faces in Hollywood.
(Blinking should never be a kegel exercise…but that’s just my opinion.)
…Mostly, the worrisome thing is that what was hidden under the “health” mantra, seemed to at the same time shame any woman who looked like she belonged or could claim her current decade on earth, any time at all after 20.
…Which super sucks. Not only for the woman in question, but the generations who follow her…thinking that these are (and must be) the rules. Which gets into this whole political bent, I’m not even gonna get into right now.
…But what I guess I’m saying is that:
My Mom turned 60 today. And she is a survivor of a lot of shit and a succeeder through even more, and I think that instead of hiding that fact, and this day– instead of masking or down-playing it…instead of pretending it’s less time, with less work, or less reason to shout that shit from the damn rooftops–one ought to embrace the flying fuck out of it!
So: Happy Six Decades of planet-life, and the winning of every single day that got you here! Be proud of it, Mama!
Cuz, I sure am!
Love,
~Your Kid