My Life and Thighs

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
                                     ---Bob Dylan

Then

 Remember when we looked like this in a bathing suit?  

No? Well, okay, neither do I. But I’m reasonably sure we didn’t look like this, either.

Now

Fat is a constant in my universe.

For many years I considered myself a poster child for Weightwatchers: a success story who actually kept the weight off. But that was then, and this is now. Today I could still be on a Weightwatchers poster, but now it would be titled MOST WANTED. Time and fat march on. (By the way, did you know that is a constant amount of fat in the universe? If I lose weight, someone else gains it. It works like one of those liquid filled google-eyed dolls. If you squeeze the body,  fluid rushes to its head and its eyes bulge out. Fat works the same way. If my butt gets smaller, someone else's grows that much larger.) Anyway, things have changed enough so I am horrified by the sight on my thighs on parade. The cut-off jeans I once wore—the ones that flashed my nether cheeks—were packed away long ago. The bathing suits sat in the bottom dresser drawers so long that their elastic dried out and turned to powder. I assiduously, religiously and carefully avoided wearing a bathing suit for many, many years.

I think I've made Daniel Craig cry.

But an upcoming Florida vacation has brought my thighs back to light. I discussed the aging-body issue with one of my stalwart Stony Brook friends, Barbara. We agreed that a potato sack swathing me from neck to knee would be the kindest way to go. So I screwed my courage to the sticking-place and headed to L.L. Bean to shop for a bathing suit in the dead of January. No more two-piece deals with lots of ribs and hips and butt cheek on display. The sight of my aging, ample flesh would make strong men cry. And they would not be crying with joy.

Remote fitting rooms

I found a remote set of fitting rooms near the bathing suit racks, where I hoped to encounter as few life forms as possible. The last thing I wanted was sympathetic clucking from another surivor of the Age of Aquarius. I proceeded to drag piles of bathing suit tops and bottoms into the tiny cubicle for a brutal trying-on binge. This was a way to methodically desensitize myself to the horrific sight of myself in a bathing suit. If I saw myself in enough suits, I would numb myself to the sight. Since we have finally hit 0˚ Fahrenheit up here in the northern paradise, I was layered in shirts, sweaters, scarves topped with a down parka. That doesn’t include the requisite jeans, sweat socks and bra. Peeling off the layers of winter clothes, I faced myself in a full-length mirror. I think Joseph Conrad said it best: The horror! The horror!  I was staring at myself wearing ill-fitting swimming shorts, navy blue sweat socks and a tankini top that covered ribs, hips and still had more folds of fabric looking for a place to fall. The dimpled thighs completed the picture. I shuddered. I wasn't sufficiently numbed yet.

Finally, I settled on a tankini top (the better to cover the ribs and hips) and a bottom with a modesty panel (the better to cover as much thigh as possible).  The names alone are enough to make me gag. Tankini? WTF is that? Modesty panel? I used to strut around in teeny, tiny two-piece affairs that barely covered the cleft of my ass. Nowadays I find myself using the term age-appropriate a lot.  

My current reincarnation

So this is it. I am officially old. I am wearing an old woman’s swimsuit. This is where I should be launching into a moving meditation on aging (gracefully or otherwise) and the female body. Suffice it to say I just don’t have it in me to spin that yarn.