I had a facial a couple of months ago, and instead of feeling better and looking prettier, I felt the exact opposite. I felt old.

The therapist asked me questions about my skin care products, nutrition and cosmetics, and in a matter-of-fact way pointed out my flawed appearance – from the sagging cheeks, frown lines to the dark circles under my eyes. She attributed the rather ‘un-fresh’ state of my face to many factors, including poor circulation, sun exposure, unhealthy eating habits … and old age (no… she didn’t say that, but she didn’t have to).

Of course I knew I was older but hadn’t quite expected this stark revelation.

Age has a way of happening. You get a bit older every year, but the ‘getting older’ process is so gradual that it sort of sneaks up on you, and when you become aware of it, and I mean really aware of your absent youth or impending mortality, it is a little sad, a little scary, and a little funny. I felt like the face, the body, the mind and the general attitude packed-up and forgot to tell me about it.

We live in a society that values youth, and all things young, except when you have to hire a young person to work for you, but that is an aside. Moving the age goalpost has not really helped or boosted the spirits of an older person, like ‘moi’. We keep pushing the years back. I am confused. Is 50 the new 40? Or 60 now really 40?  To some extent, technology, lifestyle and nutrition (the latter is increasingly questionable with pesticides, growth hormones infiltrating our food sources) have helped improve our quality of life, and made our biological age seem younger than our chronological age. But, old is still old.

Like any old car or equipment, the human body suffers wear and tear, and our body parts fail us, albeit, at varying rates. But, invariably it happens to the best of us. I wonder what it would be like to age in reverse like in the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Remember how Brad Pitt starts his life as an old man and grows into an infant? Whether in sequence or in reverse order, we become weaker and dependent towards the latter years of our lives. Hmm…

Truth be told, the last couple of years, especially after my husband and I took a year off, our so-called delayed ‘gap year’ to travel the world, and clear the cobwebs in our heads, I felt more old and less adventurous. I am not sure if the intensive travelling, living out of suitcases and moving from one hotel, motel and cabana to another, every other day, has taken a toll but all I know is it has made me a little less enthused about life.

Whatever the reasons, I have started, sometimes, to sound like an old person, worse still, like my parents.  I can actually relate to anecdotes and experiences that my parents, relatives and older friends reminisce over. I have also begun, at times, to act in a certain way or say something like old people would.  Horrors of horrors! My first reaction was naturally to reign in whatever behaviour, speech and mannerisms that I perceived as old. I consciously tried to sound hipper and look dapper but that didn’t quite work out.

After some introspection, denials, and some old fashion common sense, I have slowly accepted the inevitability of growing older. I am not saying it’s wonderfully liberating and I like it. I am not, but it’s not all bad especially when you have someone to grow older with. It makes the ride a little easier.

These days, creaky bones are a conversation opener for my husband and me. We have a laugh at how we used to react to comments by our parents when they said cold weather made their arthritis act up or knees hurt. They are right – weather does affect our bones. Cold weather is not arthritis-friendly as I can now attest to. Another tell-tale sign is we don’t leap off our sofa or jump across a fairly, big uncovered monsoon drain without first calling a meeting of our senses. After careful consideration of the various possibilities – some of which could involve broken or fractured limbs and huge elements of pain – we take the safer route. We are slowly but surely adjusting.

Another symptom is being repetitive, yes, I repeat what I say. My husband, not so much yet. I do try to catch myself from saying the same thing too many times. I am conscious of replaying conversations or information in my head that sort of tumbles from my lips before I have a chance to catch them. I have seen how children either smirk or tell you bluntly they heard you the first time while the more polite among us, just smile and nod. Having been a smirker myself, a long time ago, I don’t want to be smirked at.

Increasingly, we also tend to remember and speak about things and past experiences. As we get older, it feels like our best years are behind us as we spend a lot of time remembering what we have done, rather than what we are planning to do together in the future. The funny thing is we haven’t stopped doing stuff now, but we seem to choose or remember them less. I guess the mind and memory will compute and collate the ‘now’ things, and before long these too will become things of the past. We tend to remember with much clarity what we did or where we were a decade ago than yesterday or the day before. Maybe remembering and speaking about the past, gives it more importance and makes it seems better somehow, rose-tinted glasses and all, then it really was.

Apart from memory and hearing loss, failing eye-sight, and death, we do have other things to look forward to. Yes, really. We still have our work, which we enjoy, some of the time. We have each other to moan to, and enjoy the good and bad as we plod along the garden path to older age.