Give It A Rest

Announcing My New eBook: The Family Mix Giving Circle Today on TueNight

Give It A Rest

Every once in a while I see a print ad or a sidebar on the web showing the same shirtless older man with the abs and arms of a 23 year old. He’s wearing glasses and what hair he still has is white, which creates an unsettling juxtaposition against the abdominal twelve pack that glistens in the sun as he leans against a motorcycle, surely meant to imply that this guy’s engine is still revved up. He’s the poster boy for a health regimen called Cenegnics, which I don’t even want to look up on Google for fear that they, and the NSA, will think I want to see this man in my sidebars even more.

Because when I look at him, I don’t think, “Wow, that’s a really buff septuagenarian!” I think, “Wow, seriously? Are we never allowed to relax?”

Then I feel a wave of sympathy for his poor wife, and the pressure she must be under to look as good as her freakish husband when really, she’s probably reached the age where she’s earned some elastic waist pants and a wash n’ wear hairstyle.

I am thrilled that my husband takes care of himself and stays fit through cycling. I am also thrilled that he occasionally eats entire Share Size bags of Vinegar Kettle Chips in one sitting. As healthy as he is, he doesn’t look exactly like he did when I used to stalk him on the Ultimate Frisbee field at grad school, where he would run around shirtless and sweaty and rail thin. (He was such an easy mark: all I had to do was offer to cook for him and he was trapped in my web of three squares a day.) Thanks to his he still looks younger than his age. But just like me, he’s a bit softer and more lined than when we met, and I wouldn’t want him any other way. I know exactly what’s transpired over the past two decades to cause those signs of aging (I’m not going to single out our kids, but, ssshhhhh, it’s our kids.)

Demi Moore and Madonna’s life choices to the contrary, I don’t think most women really want their husbands to look twenty-five years old forever, because that’s a very high standard to live up to. Every time my husband gets a new gray hair or his crows’ feet stretch a millimeter further, it’s a little less pressure on me to wage war against what beauty companies might call The Seven Signs of Aging. I figure as long as we’re going downhill at approximately the same rate, it’s good for the marriage. If neither of us gets disproportionally more or less attractive to our peers, then we avoid introducing any new math to the relationship.

Which brings me back to the Cenegenics guy. One could almost argue that it’s antagonistic to look like that at seventy or whatever he is. He seems like the kind of guy who would buy his wife a barbell and a juicer for their 50th anniversary.

For her sake, whoever Mrs. Cenegenics is, I hope she says, “Good luck with whatever it is you have happening there with your supplements, buddy. As for me, I’m going to use my retirement time the way God intended it.” With her feet propped up on the barbell, drinking a margarita she whipped up in the juicer.

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The reviews are coming in for The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life from MidlifeMixtape.com and I couldn’t be more grateful: one reader compared me to St. Erma (Bombeck) and another said that I made her snort coffee up her nose when she read it. Hashtag Winning! Hope you’ll continue to tell your friends and post your reviews – it really makes a difference in helping the book get some visibility in a very crowded publishing market! And if you haven’t gotten your copy yet, let me quote another reviewer who said “A total bargain at $2.99.” Click on the cover below if you’d like to download your own copy!

***Was there a children’s music CD that saved your sanity when your kids were small? I’m talking about mine over at The Rumpus today, so click on through here if you’d like to read. That post inspired today’s vid…