{"id":1898,"date":"2012-10-27T08:27:29","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T12:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=1898"},"modified":"2012-10-28T09:42:09","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T13:42:09","slug":"look-what-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=1898","title":{"rendered":"Look What Happened!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not so long ago, the age I am now seemed impossibly old. But I don’t feel old. I refuse to join the AARP – not yet. Still, I have to face it – I am aging<\/em> – and mostly, it’s okay.<\/p>\n

My gray hair doesn’t bother me much and is easy to camouflage; a bout of vanity hits every six months or so and I get highlights. Although the occasional joint gets achey, especially my hips, and sometimes my back threatens to act up, but I blame that on too much sitting at work. Immediately reviving my erratic yoga practice gets me back to normal. I’m pretty fit and my weight is good. I’ve cut way back on how many glasses of wine I imbibe and I mostly get enough sleep. But look what I discovered last week —<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is my mouth in repose. Okay, the jowly bits are an unfortunate family trait, but I’ve already had a few decades to get used to them. \u00a0The pinched look of my lips isn’t the worst of it, although it is as if my flesh is drawing inwards to better secure my teeth (getting long) in my mouth. The general slackness of my skin is also not very attractive, but still, that’s not what disturbs me.<\/p>\n

What upsets me is that when I am in thought, just going about my day, walking down the street, driving my car, RIGHT NOW, my mouth settles into a doleful expression. Look! In a few more years, mine will look like a marionette’s mouth, with lines creeping down along either side of my chin. \u00a0How did this happen? In spite of quite a few years of incredible stress and sadness, I am a happy person. And yet, there it is: when I am in an unselfconscious state, mine is a sad<\/em> face.<\/p>\n

I suspect the state of my mouth disturbs me more because it reminds me of my mother’s. From a way-too-early age, my mother internalized and defined herself by unhappiness. She certainly had her own, but she also glommed onto other’s losses and betrayals, almost taking pleasure in co-opting their tragedies as her own to grieve, to tell. My mother died at 64. That’s only 10 year more years for me. I am determined to keep smiling through whatever I have left.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So if you see me with a foolish grin on my face, I may be thinking of something funny or I might just be doing mouth calisthenics. I want my face to reflect my joy and damn gravity!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not so long ago, the age I am now seemed impossibly old. But I don’t feel old. I refuse to join the AARP – not yet. Still, I have to face it – I am aging – and mostly, it’s okay. My gray hair doesn’t bother me much and is easy to camouflage; a bout … Continue reading Look What Happened!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,20,29,35,4,5,12,19],"class_list":["post-1898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seasonal-musings","tag-aging","tag-grief","tag-healing","tag-learning-to-relax","tag-living-with-addiction","tag-memoir","tag-nature","tag-time"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-uC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1903,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions\/1903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}