Our Great Disguise
The other day I was sitting at the
hairdressers getting a permanent wave, a process which takes a long time and is
sufficiently tedious enough for me not to bore you with details. I mention it
only because I do a lot of thinking there; on this day my thoughts, much like
those of "our older friends", idly strung together a chain of events
that led me back into my past.
I do a lot of thinking at the hair salon
because I wear glasses, and I have to take them off there. After the perm rods
are squished all over my head, I can't even put them back on, so I just sit
there while other patrons are flipping through magazines or novels or
newspapers. I was remembering being in a salon some 14 years ago, at which time
the hairdresser ended up burning my hair off - this happened because my hair was
overly dry (and she was overly inept) from having to put white shoe polish in it
for a theatrical show I'd been performing in at my college. That memory called
to mind a performance I'd seen of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's
Dream just last year at my alma mater - the women playing the fairies
in that show had sprayed and teased their hair so that it was all wild and
sticking up off of their heads; I wondered how long it took them to get it back
to normal after each show, and if any of them ended up with permanent damage. Or
an inch and a half of hair left, which was my experience.
We'd done the same show, only 15 years
earlier. Many of my friends were in the cast. I remembered the highlights fondly
(like the two guys playing Oberon and Puck, who swung all over the stage with
nothing but lycra leggings on...mmmmm), and it all seemed to me as if only a few
years had passed. Comparing the two casts in my mind, I suddenly realized that
the students who had performed most recently were very likely not even out of
diapers when we'd performed it. Toddlers in diapers - now voluptuous women and
strong young men. Who, if asked, would think the span of 15 years made our show
ancient history. To be honest, I would have thought the same thing at their age.
Anything that happened 15 years ago was old, old, old.
To me it seems almost yesterday, so
easily my mind can summon up images, sounds, and laughter. I certainly don't feel
fifteen years older. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still in the very prime of
life, since that's how I feel on the inside. Thus, sitting blind and bored in a
hairdresser's chair, I began to learn one of the most powerful mysteries of
aging.
I will remember this when I next visit
the local nursing home with other members of my church, when I look around at
all the white hair, deep wrinkles, age spots, walkers and wheelchairs. These
trappings are all part of an elaborate disguise; neither you nor I should be
fooled by them. They are your destiny, and mine, God willing. Perhaps your
disguise is already beginning to form, that first white in your hair, the little
lines around your eyes, the comfortable shoes. It may fool some people, but not
you. What continues to burn and bloom inside us is our eternal youth. Look
around yourself some day on the street, the subway, in the coffee shop, and
observe the young men and women of today: their ignorance and vitality are
stamped firmly upon them, they have no idea of how beautiful they are, they have
no idea that they will carry that youth inside of them all their days. They
believe, as I once did, that they are immortal in their supple, unlined flesh,
but they are destined to learn the mystery of age just as we are. One day they
will see time's mark upon them and wonder how it ever happened.
Frederick Buechner described it well in
his novel Godric, a beautifully written narrative of the life of the
12th-century saint:
Leigh Deacon 2002