Vanity

Isn’t it ironic that the things you’re the most vain about are often the very things you lose? Ironic? Or justice? And if justice… from whom or what?
When we lived in Florida my ex husband used to remark that the only group of people of whom he was prejudiced was the group of people he’d be a member of --if he was lucky…old people. How ironic.
No one could ever have been as vain of her legs as was I. They were my best feature. But now… now they have those teeny tiny red road map lines travelling from my knees across to my inner thighs. And a strange sort of knot has arisen from my shin… the result of too many track meets when I was in high school and not enough warm ups. The cellulite on my thighs laughs out at me when I try on bathing suits. Why can’t they make those pantaloon suits, so popular in the roaring ’20’s, popular again? I have bursitis in my hip which wakes me every night as I lie on my right side, facing away from my husband so he doesn’t have to listen to me snore in his ear. At least one of us should get some sleep. Yes. My legs are gone. I can camouflage them in the winter in black tights and still look stylish. But come summer, its long skirts for me- eccentric is beginning to look good.
As my legs have deserted me, however, a stranger vanity has replaced them. I have never been proud of my hair. Its’ limp curly strands never behaved like the shampoo ads promised. Now, however, just when it’s definitely time to start thinking about abandoning the hair color aisle, my hair starts to do exactly what I always wanted it to do. It’s become straighter. And a bonus! Thicker. And even better… it’s gotten long. OK, I agree that the long thing has something to do with me. A few years before my mother died she commented on my hair, “You can’t be letting it grow out. Old women don’t look good with long hair.” Some part of me believed her because after that conversation I chopped it all off and up until now have never let it get longer than my chin.
But a few months ago I decided to let it grow. Defiant of my mother I thought, “Mom, I’m letting it grow to my ass.” I like that vision- my long half-gray hair swinging down my back in one long braid. Or wound, grandmother style, around my head.
Ironic? Now that my hair is graying and probably getting finer and definitely falling out a little… to decide to shake my fist at my mother and all other naysayers… and, yes, to my knees too… and let it be what it wants to be. Is it vain to enjoy something about yourself that you know will leave you? Does it make one a little shallower to be proud of something which you surely don’t have any control over… be it knees or hair or skin or eye color? And if you’re proud of it, will you grieve when it waves goodbye?
I’m sad that my good looking legs aren’t what they were when I was 20. But they’ve taken me places that I never could have envisioned. They’re worn and the knees sag a little. But they’re me. And the hair? That’s me, too. A wiser me that knows not to kick a gift horse in the mouth. And not to get too attached to something that can detach with a few snips.
I hope my Mom can see me. And I hope my Grandmother is standing beside her somewhere… her own hair, which I would brush for her, wound in braids around her head. And I hope they’re both smiling.