Silver Fox

They call me the silver fox.
I’ll steal your heart then forget your name.

I sway along the pavement - rolling hips still all of my own - while making sure I keep my head held as high as the crook in my spine will let me. I trail long silver hair, still with a streak of brown, behind me to float in the breeze and occasionally whip strangers about their shoulders. There’s no perm or blue rinse in my future, oh no, I’ve still got some youth in these old follicles yet!

Why is the idea of growing old gracefully such a sin these days? You young women spend a fortune plumping your lines, lifting your faces, filling out your breasts, basting yourselves with self-tan and tattooing eyebrows and lipstick on (how ridiculous is that going to look when you’re 60?). Darlings, there’s no shame in showing the lines of a thousand laughs, the sagging skin that stretched itself out to give your children somewhere cosy to grow and silver hair you can make shiny with decent shampoo and a pint of stout.
Look at me - all eyes if you please as I do love the attention - I’m 75 and I still catch men staring with lust in their eyes: young ones, old ones, middle aged. All are fine by my standards and I do love to be alluring (much to the horror of my sons and dismay of my daughters). I’m probably the only O.A.P in town to own orthopaedic stilettos and strut in the same sized clothes that I could in my 50s.

Who wrote the rules on what a grandmother should and shouldn’t do?
I feel far too vibrant to sit with other old women drinking tea and discussing soap operas, or to collect china plates with pictures of kittens printed onto them. I'll glide and dance and shock sales assistants in stores when I pick up raunchy underwear with genuine interest rather than resign myself to off-white fabric and itchy elastic. There’s still far too much kick in my curves, as well as wisdom in my creases, for me to crumple and hobble and smell like lavender and act the way I’m expected to.

Oh don’t grimace at me like that!

It’s taken so many years to appreciate what the Good Lord gave me and he did do some damn good work!
I feel good in my skin, even if it is drooping away from my bones.That’s not me being vain or anything of the sort, I just feel like all my experience has moulded me into a shape to be proud of, both inside and out. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about what I’m supposed to or that I’m purposely hiding from what’s expected of me, I just am who I am and there’s no point in resigning myself to a life I’m not ready to live just yet.

Maybe when I’m 90 I’ll tone it down a bit and go easy on the low necklines?

I’m not weak, and I’m not feeble. None of my croaky voiced loafer wearing O.A.P sisters and brothers are either, even the ones I try to avoid becoming. We’ve had lives so long and eventful that it’s about time, now that we’re in the prime of our lives, to finally let loose, have a little fun and embrace ourselves exactly the way we are. Hey, we may be the last ever generation to ever do that.