Photo and Swimmer

I am starting a new project, and for this I needed a professional headshot.  My dear neighbor is a professional photographer with considerable skill.  He volunteered to take my picture.

And yet.

I look old.  Older than I thought I looked.  In my mind's eye, I look like Demi Moore's cousin from the around time Demi was in St. Elmo's Fire, or right after she got her haircut super short.  I look in the mirror and I don't see the wrinkles, the sagging skin, the chin flab.  The gray hair blends in with the dark brown.

My dear neighborhood friend has taken beautiful pictures of people in their sixties, seventies and eighties, with wrinkles and silver hair, so it can't be his skill that is the problem.  The problem is with my own eyes.  My friend wanted me to look experienced, to show off the gray that I've earned.  He did not want to make me look young -- no vaseline on the lens, no soft focus, no dim lighting to hide what Mother Nature has brought me.  Vanity--I never knew I had it.  In my twenties, I'd happily roll out of bed and run to the gym or coffee shop across the street without make-up and with a band pulling back my hair.  I am still relatively low maintenance when it comes to my looks, so I was shocked to discover how vain I have become.

What has happened to me, other than middle age, that vast time the time between youth and being elderly?  With my looks, I want to resemble someone in their thirties.  For my level of wisdom, I wish I were an older soul, someone who has more experience and insight.  I have a friend in her nineties who learned how to drive before Hitler invaded Poland.  She has lived twice as long as me, so I can't expect to have the depth of her perspective, though I aspire to it.  Is this the trade-off we make as we age: freshness for wisdom?  I should at least pray for wisdom.  Not everyone gets wiser as they age.

I saw a ballet this weekend that reminded me that sometimes older is better.  We were in San Francisco and we saw the SF Ballet perform a new piece called Swimmer by Yuri Possokhov.  The piece was loosely based on the John Cheever story published in The New Yorker in the 1960's.  Vitor Luiz danced the lead.  I have no idea how old he is, but he certainly had gravitas.  A fresher-faced dancer could not have carried that role as well.

Perhaps the same could be said for me and my new project.  My neighbor the photographer knew it before I did.