you will never see me with Nancy's face!      

             I credit Steve (God help me but I’ve forgotten his last name), a senior in my high school, with first making me feel beautiful.  I had just gotten my braces off, ditched my glasses for contacts, and if I hadn’t exactly morphed from ugly duckling to swan, I had gone from plain Jane to presentable, and he stopped me one day early in my freshman year to tell me he had just followed me down the hall to watch me walk.

            “You have the most incredible pair of legs,” he said.

            Naturally, we then spent hours on the telephone talking late into the night, me, hiding the phone under the covers.  We also made out on my living room couch.  Such was romance in 1970.  I traded him in for a series of other older boys who seemed to get me when boys my own age didn’t understand my peculiar brand of geekiness, feminism, political activism and the fact that I wasn’t blonde and would never be a cheerleader, and most of all the fact that I was just itching to get out of town at the first chance.  But Steve, Steve was the first boy who appreciated me and the first who showed me I had a feature that would stand me in good stead. And since then it has always been my pins, my sticks, my gams, that have been the feature about me I liked best.  He also helped show me my physical power as a woman and I have to say I used that power, sometimes to good, and sometimes, to disastrous, effect, for many years.

            My twenties were a mixed bag.  I was probably never more physically attractive during those years, but my emotional intelligence, for reasons too complex and too boring to detail, made me a sitting target for a whole host of bizarre encounters.  For some reason, the good sense I had had up until I was eighteen suddenly evaporated once I turned twenty two and I set about on a course of mindblowingly destructive relationships, mixed in with a couple of good ones I let go.

                 And then I did what any woman in that kind of situation would do, at twenty-nine I married the wrong man.

            It wasn’t until I hit my late thirties that I finally began to find myself again.  The kids were born and I seemed to be adept at parenting, even though I had had no good role model, and I began to awaken, as if from a long sleep.  I began to realize how much of my power, both physical and emotional, I had given away for far too long, and I decided it was time to turn that whole thing around.  I had been in therapy but I finally began to use what I had learned.  And…..

            Then, in my early forties, after returning from a year living in England, I began to think about getting strong physically.  About doing something I had never done before. 

            I started going to a gym. My then husband worked for a university which offered a gratis membership so that part was easy.  What was hard was making myself do it.  But, as my children woke early each morning and I woke with them, I left them with said husband and took off at six a.m. for an hour, three days a week to start, getting back so he could get to work and drop the oldest at school on his way.

            I loved going to the gym and I loved working out. At first, a novice, I had to learn to use the weight machines, but I soon got the hang of it and I became a regular.  I found when I didn’t go, I missed it. At first I merely felt energized.  And then I began to feel stronger.  I liked feeling stronger.  I liked thinking that maybe I could be as tough on the outside as I was on the inside.  That, more than anything else, appealed to me.

 The small gym was perfect and I could do the circuit in a reasonable amount of time.  Then, a huge new gym with all kinds of fancy machines was built and I had to learn them all over again, but I found that these machines were even better and there were rowers and treadmills and all sorts of cardio machines that I could build into my routine.  I felt stronger and in better shape and I could see the results.

 And then, we moved to Paris for two years, and I walked six miles a day, routinely, which kept me as thin as I had ever been, but did nothing for my upper body strength, although lifting and toting groceries and laundry helped some.

            I returned to realize that I had to adapt to life as I had known it once again, as I had when I came home from living abroad the first time, and I also knew that there was no way in hell that I was going to just slip into the same old same old.  My marriage had been failing for years and I had to face it.  I had to face a lot of things.

            Fast forward.  Divorce, some years alone.  Remarriage and a move. I woke up and realized I had gained weight and lost my edge, physically.

            Back to the gym.  This time with a trainer.  This time it wasn’t free.  But it was the best money I have ever spent.  And am still spending.

            By a variety of means I dropped the pounds I had put on by cooking for a new man and through sheer laziness, and I began to build my body in ways I had never imagined possible.

            Through classes and vigorous and steady weight lifting and cardio training, my arms began to take on a shape and definition that even others noticed. A few months ago, out with friends for dinner during a conference, I slipped out of my jacket and reached for my wine, when several women at the table stopped and stared at me.  “Oh, my God, one said, “Look at those killer arms!”  The women made me reach for my glass over and over.  “How did you get those Michelle Obama arms?” they asked.  I laughed.  “Hard work, girls, mucho hard work.”  But I was very happy.  I didn’t have the view they did, but I could tell, when I lifted and toted, when I reached to dry my hair, that there was something different.  Originally, I was interested in making sure I never had to worry about old age batwings, but this was even better. Killer arms?  I could settle for that quite easily.

            It’s not just the look of them; it’s that I can carry my own luggage, too.  I have a husband who will do that for me when we travel together, but I do a fair amount of traveling along, too; and the thing is that husbands are easy to lose. Or, at the least, misplace.

            My back and shoulders are strong,  those old gams are still looking good and tight, too, and I’m working on my two pack abs and trying to get them up to a four, maybe a six (like Helen Mirren at 60 plus!)I doubt it, but who knows?

            But the body is one thing.  I will never do what Nancy Pelosi and a million others have done to their faces.  I will not Botox or nip or tuck or inject anything.  I want my smiles to radiate and my frowns to be recognizable.  I want my lies to show up, although the truth is I can’t lie so I want that to just show up on my face..  I want every wrinkle I’ve earned to show up, softened by only my favorite face cream and whatever  I can do with make up and a good haircut to disguise it.  And I don’t even mind those sunspots that show that dumb-ass summer I spent ogling the cute lifeguards while my face and body were slathered with baby oil and iodine. I’ve been under the knife enough to know that going under it for vanity isn’t my bag.  I will go the gym and work my ass off and lift those weights till I sweat because, frankly, it gives me a rush and I love it.  But cutting my face or sticking needles in it just ain’t in the cards. I may well be one of those grandmas whose grandkids say Wow grandma you have a really young body and a really old face. But, then maybe not.

            At my husband’s 60^th birthday party last week, he was sweet enough to stop the festivities, and raise his glass to me and thank me for arranging the whole thing, then lean down and give me a kiss. Maybe it was because he has a large shock of white hair, maybe it was the good lighting and the fact that I don’t have any gray hair (really, we just don’t gray early in my family) but a ten year old guest piped up and said, “But she’s only 30, Mommy, how can they be married?”

            It got a laugh for sure, and made my husband stop and think, but if I play it right, perhaps I can mess with ten-year-old boys' heads for years to come.