This is 40.

Four decades of hearts and spades -

The heat of summer slowly fades…

From not caring what the world thinks,

To discovering it doesn’t care to think.

Grey hair, crow feet, and wrinkles -

Merrily coexisting with still surfacing pimples.

Stuck between saving for the future,

And realizing “you live life only once”!

The bartender no longer asks for my ID,

And neck tightening cream ads crowd the feed on FB (seriously, wtf!)

People around me keep getting younger…the teacher, the police officer…

Can’t keep my new ob/gyn - ffs, the doctor needs to be older!

20 years ago is no longer in the 90s

George Clooney and Hugh Grant are in their 60s!

New words sneak into my vocabulary -

Retinoid, collagen and apparently the need for vitamin c?

Trying to hold a plank and committing to regular stretching,

While snapping some unknown muscle doing nothing .

The self righteous follies of younger days

Have moved over for calmer acceptance of others’ ways..

While my jokes continue to be incorrect, politically,

In my heart I surely am less judgmental.

Also, the way it goes, Age is just a number…

But pls somebody wake my metabolism up from its slumber!

Life begins at 40, they say

9 pm is when I am done with the day.

Quadragenarian is the word. fellow millennials!

40 is the new 20 they advertise,

40 is the new 40, I summarize.

All reactions:

38Nithya Iyer, Aparna Bhaduri and 36 others

The Lament of the First Silver

As I brushed my (not-so) long (not-so) silky mane in front of the mirror today,

My eyes noticed a shimmer in one of those (not-so) desirable tresses -

What was it - a play of the newly fitted incandescent light bulb?

As I looked closer, my heart grew heavier...

However fanciful a sliver might sound - there was my first white - white as snow!

Oh good lord, my first white at the (not-so) tender age of four years before thirty-five

Does this happen, is it true, was this a sign of a cancer or a tumor or worse,was it simply old age?

Old age at one year after thirty - has this what it has come to? Should I sign my will already?

Are days of spring long gone, am I in the autumn of my life already?

Oh but hang on, what was that news about pollution and stress - all those chemicals in the food and air?

I look around and forget the pollution, there's my toddler and my (supposed) better half 

There's also some unrecognizable mess on the rug, and piles of laundry from the weekend.

I can't blame the gray today on global warming alone, I sigh!

My first reaction was of rage - I plucked that unwanted weed from my (not-so) happy garden

The sense of foreboding doom loomed large over my (otherwise fairly well) being

And I turned for solace to my best friend these days - the WWW.

Don't pluck, it said - color it the colors of joy - like really burgundy colored white hair seem like the thing?

Disheartened I called my loving mother who was mighty amused and said - one's a mother's blessing!

Humbug, clearly she waited a little over three decades to bless her daughter...

I mentioned it in passing to the man of the house who tutted over his tablet without so much as a glance up.

With accusatory eyes I showed the lock to my daughter who heartlessly laughed away my lamentation.

Clearly, I am growing old, in oblivion.

(Epilogue:

A couple of calming scoops of strawberry icecream later, I am trying to live again

It is difficult I won't deny, but then I take my self for a survivor.

Life is so cruel that it beats me, I think I need to open some wine tonight -

That with more icecream and chocolate should show that mocking silver that I haven't given up, as yet!)