Friday, June 29, 2012

A Midlife Tween


They say midlife is a second adolescence. I don't know -- something about unresolved emotional issues resurfacing at this special time of life. Perhaps it's watching your children go through their stuff that just shakes up your own deep-seated debris. Or we've got this new chance to make it all right again? Or perhaps it's hitting that other side of the bell curve of life. We're born. We travel up to our peak age, which is probably around 35, and then we start going downhill until we're aged and in diapers again.

If I had to put myself on that spectrum, I would be just sliding down on that other side where I do seem to mirror adolescence. My teeth are all crooked again. I seem to be having emotional growth spurts. I'm revisiting feelings where I look in the mirror as my body changes and I say, "Who's that?" All not unlike adolescence.

It's a time of change and it's an important one.

So, symbolic of this midlife time, I decided to embrace (literally) this change of life time and get my teeth fixed. Broken molars from mismatched jawbones run in my family and I wanted to avoid a dental catastrophe in five years so I took the plunge.


And now I look like an adolescent girl with crow's feet!

In six months, I'll have my jaw broken and re-aligned so that I can finally chew and talk without pain.

Sexy I might not look, but as a wise woman of midlife, I understand more and more that sexy is less about how we look and more about how I feel.

I am very grateful to Dr. Elena-Lee Ritoli, a high school friend, actually, who is helping put my Humpty Dumpty teeth back together again. I didn't realize how BAD they were until she put these things on my teeth. Whoa.

I get the feeling I am going to find a lot of spirit in middle age and beyond.