Necks

Hello and welcome to our second Lego League Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is February 7th.

Yes, Wannaskan fans, we've been here before. Two weeks ago, to be precise. Our teams stayed at the same hotel. The kids had a blast swimming, hot tubbing, and ping-ponging just like last time. A mom brought huge tubs of cookies and her famous seasoned pretzels. The adults enjoyed lounging and chatting on the indoor patio furniture. While others are vacationing in Florida, Arizona, and Hawaii, we're enjoying a bit of terrarium warmth at the C'mon Inn.

So, while we wait to see how today goes, I'd like to tell you about my neck.

Yesterday, I looked in the mirror and noticed the skin under my chin was looking sort of saggy. "Oh my gosh, 'I feel bad about my neck' is now happening to me." I'm referring to Nora Ephron's book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, a collection of essays on aging. 

I remember reading this book at book club when it came out. Ephron was flat-out funny with her clear-eyed wit about the inevitable. I was in my early thirties at the time. Back then, I had a smooth line from chin to suprasternal notch - that dip in the base of the neck. And, yes, I googled that.

I suppose, like most young people, I thought it would never happen to me. Sure, I would someday have some saggy bits, but I'd be spared the chicken wattle of age. If I worked out, I wouldn't be flapping chicken-wing arms. I might have a gait like a duck, but I vowed I would never waddle, no matter how old I got.

Then three things happened to me.

The first was the need for cheaters. My cousin, a few years my senior, warned me that it would happen. My vision would blur, and I'd need to hold things four feet away to bring them into focus. He wasn't wrong.

Next, I noticed age spots. I actually found those fascinating. They reminded me of my grandmother's hands, and then my mother's. Contemplating my hands meant thinking about my maternal heritage. The nostalgia was comforting. The aging didn't seem so bad.

Then, my skin started losing its elasticity. It got papery. First on my hands. And then around my knees, which also made me think of my grandma, and just about every grandpa doing laps or playing shuffleboard at the pool in my grandmother's gated senior citizen community in Arizona when I was sixteen years old. Suddenly, nostalgia wasn't so warm and cushy anymore. It was a stone-cold shove of reality. A big, bossy push that said, "You're next, bub."

All drama aside, I've been aging pretty gracefully. Only a handful of wiry gray hairs. Laugh lines and some crow's feet. The kind of aging that gives you character. Patina, I heard a woman say once. 

But this neck thing. Jeepers. It surprised me. It made me pause and consider my mortality. Or, at least, wonder what the next telltale sign of aging would be. (The veins in my legs are looking a little varicose-y.)

When my husband came to bed at the C'mon Inn, he said, "You know, all these other parents, they're like twenty years younger than us. And you look like them!"

I'll take the compliment.