Leanne Grabel illustrates the finer– and funnier– points of growing up, growing old and growing into your own skin.
Old, Part One
On August 4, 2024, in 40 days, 960 hours, 57,600 minutes, I will turn 73. Yes, a prime number. And that may be the only interesting thing about it. I mean, 73? Damn. That’s like a grandmother age. But, I guess I am a grandmother. And, of course, I could be dead.
Science says cells grow physically tired at 70. Telomeres, the little protective shoelace tips at the end of each chromosome, are fraying, losing grip. Some are falling off, leaving our chromosomes unprotected and vulnerable to damage.
At 70, our protein levels are dipping and our cells are struggling to maintain adequate levels. Our mitochondria are beginning to malfunction. Our cells even become so dysregulated that they start to eat each other. And normally neat eaters, they begin to leave big messes behind. Some of them even give up and kill themselves.
Our neural pathways start eroding, creating itches that are aggressive and unreachable, inexplicable and interminable. Ghost itches. And taste buds begin to fade and fail. It takes 12 times more salt for me to taste saltiness now, scientists say. Three times more sugar to taste sweetness. Annoying since I try to cut down on both.
Other than that, nothing much has changed, except perhaps the intensity of the aching. Oh, and the dying seems to be picking up speed. Last year, there was Roberta, Sara, Sherry, Lynn, Charlie, Mark, Gloria, Karen, Walt, Jack. Yikes. Of course, a lot of the reason was cancer. Not surprising. My friends and I were children when everyone, except Rachel Carson, thought pesticides were the greatest thing since frozen peas. We merrily danced in the pesticide mist.
Old, Part Two
Jeanne Calment, the longest-lived White woman in recorded history, lived to be 122½. She rode a bike until she was 100. And she smoked cigarettes daily until she was 117. She died on my 46th birthday, on Barack Obama’s 36th birthday, on what would have been Louis Armstrong’s 96th birthday, on the 53rd anniversary of the Frank’s family discovery by the Nazis.
But, leaning positive, if I’m like Jeanne Calment, I could live for another 40, 50 years. I definitely need to work harder on relaxing.
Equally important, I need to tame that voracious hound, Vanity.
Because old skin, my god. Old skin grows so thin. And it overreacts to everything, so thin-skinned. My arms now look like a 19th century map of the world. Sepia. Small continents and bodies of water suddenly appear everywhere, in all available tones of brown and purple.
If I lightly bump a cabinet door with my forearm, a tiny Finland appears. If I remove a bandage, the abrasion left by the adhesive looks worse than the original abrasion. It might have started off as tiny Sri Lanka, for instance, but then suddenly it’s the entire continent of South America. Yes, I see people staring at my arms. I see them wanting to tell me to go to the dermatologist. Don’t worry. I go to the dermatologist. I’m 7% hypochondriac and the rest Ashkenazi.
And speaking of Ashkenazi (I just noticed how that word ends!), because of my Ashkenazi blood, no doubt, I’m balding. If I push my hair back, at my forehead, there is a barren hairlessness, not unlike a balloon. I heard rosemary oil could help and started rubbing it into my pate. (Coincidentally, it clears the sinuses of everyone within a five-foot radius of my scalp.) But it doesn’t work for hair growth. Nothing does. There is just no way my scalp pores, long retired, are going to rise up and sprout again.
Even my eyebrows have balded. I’d say they are halfway done. I always had bold, black, graceful arches – like crowns – without plucking or shaping. But now, my crowns are halved. The outer half is nearly gone, like a missing shutter.
Hands & Feet
My hands and feet have taken quite a hit, too. My feet, once adorably tiny and cherubic, now they’re sea creatures. Bunions like barnacles bulge above the instep. My toes are a haphazard family. Like goats, they nudge each other. And ride up on each other. Such rude molestations. My big toes are bullies, big bullies. But, to be fair, my big toes are innocent. And my hands, same story as my feet. Once graceful and adept, my hands are now stout urchins. My fingers defy, resist. They veer into each other. Is it accusation, or love? My index fingers lean into my middle fingers as if they are trying to talk those angry f**ckers down from their rage. And my fingers have grown bulbous.
Biceps, Top to Bottom
I do still have good biceps. Because I lift. I always have weights in the living room. But the undersides of my biceps have given up. They’re sacks, scantily filled—like unused backyard hammocks or an old bra.
And my muscles now bully me. Do you know what I mean? They cramp and jerk. At night I can feel them thinking about hard things, like fascism, theocracy and cancer.
Then there's the shrinking. I’m shrinking dramatically. Sometimes I feel like I’m in another species, way down here. Borrowing from Randy Newman—at this pace—pretty soon, you’re going to have to pick me up just to say hello.
The Fart Part
I softly fart now, in public places, with minimal control. Luckily, it doesn’t happen that often. And it’s usually only at the Hollywood Library, or the Hollywood Fred Meyer’s. These little puffs pop out. Luckily, they don’t smell. (I’m almost positive.) And I can usually disguise the sound. I cough, or clear my throat, or move a chair, or slide on leather furniture. But really? It’s just like my mom. In her 80s and 90s, my mother farted in almost every mall in California. Her farts were dainty and little, just like she was. But still. It was constant, like a tiny tuba corps. And it was always a surprise. And we always laughed hard, like little girls. Farts are so dependable for a good laugh.
And I grunt and oof now–when I change levels – couch to standing, chair to standing, bed to standing, chair to couch, ground to car, lifting the dogfood, lifting the step stool, lifting my bike, lifting the baby. Grunt. Oof. Monica Seles used to bug the hell out of me with her grunts and growls when she played tennis. But now I get it. Those sounds help power the move.
Memory the Hound
Then there’s memory, that hound. I woke up the other morning and I couldn’t remember Mariska Hargitay’s name. Then I kept saying Alicia Silverstone when I meant Christina Applegate. And I can never remember Kelly Clarkson’s name, or cilantro, or delicata squash. But then I read a book by a well-respected neurologist and he said the brain, in its 70s, is at full capacity. It just spends more and more time with itself, savoring its own ideas, begetting ideas, begetting ideas.
Frankly, my brain has always been like that. But the point the book was making is that it’s not that concerning if we forget Griffin Dunne’s name or Jerry Orbach’s or William Styron’s. We are just pre-occupied with ourselves, like everyone, like always.
The neurologist also suggested our brains have finally learned how to work harmoniously—the left and the right sides together. Oh, if only our brains could train the world.
One Joy
There is one fabulous thing that happened when I entered my 70s. It’s BIG. I got in my skin. Yes. My skin let me move in. This has to be the plus side of old skin’s loss of elasticity – more room. For most of the past 60 years, at least, I’ve been trying to live inside my skin. But I always had a leg or an arm sticking out, or caught in the door, restless. So much restlessness.
But then at 70, I got in. It’s so relaxing. And I love the color palette—all the shades of red and blue and purple. But damn, there is a lot of clutter in here. And way too many dusty old habits and stale postures.
But for now, I’m celebrating the win. I can clean up tomorrow.
Leanne Grabel is a writer, illustrator, performer and retired special education teacher. In love with mixing genres, Grabel has written and produced numerous spoken-word multi-media shows, including "The Lighter Side of Chronic Depression"; "Anger: The Musical"; and "The Little Poet." Grabel was the 2020 recipient of Soapstone's Bread and Roses Award for contributions to women's literature in the Pacific Northwest. Brontosaurus Illustrated was published in 2022 by The Opiate Books; My Husband’s Eyebrows was published in 2022 by The Poetry Box; and Old with Jokes was published in 2023 by RuthieRocks Press.
Illustrations courtesty of the author.
So fabulously funny…and true