Stylishly Older

There it was snuck in toward the end of a business article on Boston.com, the concept that the Talbot’s core customer is “… the 60-year-old woman who is much more stylish than she used to be…” Right away, I pictured a little old lady with her hair pulled back in a bun, wearing sensible laced shoes and a cameo pin sitting primly on her white blouse. But then I faced the numbers and realized that I am almost that 60-year-old woman. Actually I have one year and barely a few months left, yet so many of my friends and relatives have already passed this milestone, that it’s easy to feel that I’m part of their club.

Grandma Sarah warned me that life rushes by. Decades ago I thought that life stretched endlessly in front of me. Back then I was so busy raising three children, moving here and there, volunteering for community and global causes, making couple time, hosting holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, working hard at being an afternoon carpool queen, chasing a dog and cooking and cleaning in between grasping writing moments that the years did whiz by because I didn’t have time to think straight.

Yesterday I was at my grandson Simon’s school, waiting for kindergarten dismissal. I spotted a vaguely familiar woman wandering around in the crowd of nannies, mommies and a few dads. “Janet, is that you?” My daughter Jess had been a classmate of Janet’s oldest daughter. Janet’s hair that had once been long and auburn was bobbed and highlighted. She had on more make up than I remembered but she looked fit and trim and still exuded her warm smile. She gave me a hug and suggested that we have coffee soon.

It never occurred to me to stop being stylish, to quit spicing up my outfits with scarves and beads. Will I ever not want to manicure my nails, coif my hair and coordinate my boots with my bags? I’d like to think that I’ll always be trendy without looking like what my sister and I used to refer to as a “dead teenager,” a person with graying hair and skintight jeans and a studded leather jacket.

Some mornings I wake up with an achy back and a clicking left knee but mostly I feel younger than I know I look. Janet and I are clearly the grandmas; nobody would mistake us for the moms. “Can you believe we’re doing this again!” She exclaimed. It honestly doesn’t feel like twenty years have passed by. There have been graduations, weddings and now there is another baby on the way, the first little Epstein of this generation. I can stand in that schoolyard and blink and there is my son, Aron huddling with a group of his friends. His brother, Jason is hanging from the high bars and calling to me "Mom, can we stay here late today?”