There are fine lines between wrinkles, old age

In mid-May, I described Martha and Dick Murfin as “lights in the maze,” for the way they live their elder years as a shining example to others.

Dick died about a month after I wrote about him, but Martha is still going strong at 89. She continues to volunteer in her small Western Washington community’s elementary school.

One day this fall, she was working with a little boy, and she happened to mention that she was old.

“Mrs. Muffin,” he said, using her nickname, “you aren’t old. You just have gray hair and wrinkles.”

Martha’s daughter, Ann, e-mailed me this insightful anecdote. It’s perfect as a lead-in to a column on “wrinkles.”

Ironically, as I wrote this, I also received an unsolicited e-mail touting the wonders of a facial treatment that is “better than Botox.”

(I deleted the e-mail. My strong bias? What is “better than Botox” is natural aging!)

So much could be said to challenge the highly profitable anti-aging industry. But that isn’t my intent today. I have come to celebrate wrinkles, not eliminate them.

In an earlier column, I mentioned Bill Thomas’ intriguing book, “What Are Old People For?” He spends a whole chapter on wrinkles. He’s for ‘em.

Thomas summarizes what it takes to make a wrinkle:

•Prolonged exposure of (relatively) hairless skin to sunlight;

•Exposure to “free radicals” that can alter skin protein;

•Longevity sufficient to experience age-related changes.

Each of these factors has its physiological explanation. “Free radicals,” for instance, are “aggressive chemical compounds that can damage other molecules.”

Age-related changes happen in skin collagen, that “something” that holds our skin together. As we age, collagen becomes less elastic.

My one poke at anti-aging sentiments comes in a picturesque quote from Thomas: “The profit motive, the mass media’s love affair with the new, and the anxiety provoked by growing old in a youth-obsessed culture have led millions to surrender their faces to the war on wrinkles.”

I’d rather we not fight our wrinkles but embrace them, however you want to do that.

When we look at the face of a baby, a teenager or a young adult, what do we see? One thing we see is life’s potentials.

When we look at the natural, wrinkled face of an elder, we see life’s experiences.

Those experiences don’t seem to count for as much as they used to in our American culture. But they should. Any person who has lived long enough to wear those wrinkles deserves to be treated with the respect his life experiences have earned him.

“Character” is one word we often use to describe an elder’s face. What that word means may be worthy of another column, for it means different things to different people.

I’d like to ask the onetime icon of beauty, Marilyn Monroe, to say more about her observation quoted in Thomas’ book:

“I want to grow old without facelifts. They take the life out of a face, the character. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I’ve made.”

Wrinkles are physically painless, though they can cause emotional distress.

But why? Why should those of us with wrinkles refuse to honor our own life experiences – our griefs and joys, our pains and comforts?

They all helped make us who we are today. Why is that a bad thing?

The comic strip “Pickles” is about an elderly couple, Earl and Opal. One day, Earl is sitting in a swing set with his young grandson, Nelson.

“You know what, Nelson? You remind me of myself when I was young and foolish,” Earl says.

Replies Nelson: “You know what, Grampa? You remind me of myself when I’ll be old and wrinkled.”

If you need a new wrinkle on wrinkles, here it is: Honor those who wear wrinkles. They’ve earned every one of them!