A Penny for Your Wrinkles?

plus, inebriation-induced confusion

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My granddaughter, M, and I were playing one of her favorite games: She’s Detective Little M and I’m a civilian who, due to circumstances undefined but never completely unrealistic, is constantly losing things. I’ve lost my house keys, my dog, my pants (went swimming in a river and when I returned to shore they were gone), and my TV. The game always begins the same way. I pretend to call Detective Little M (a.k.a. DLM), and she, on a scooter in traffic, at the police station, or in bed, answers the call with a slightly annoyed, “What is it?”

“I lost my TV,” I confessed in our most recent conversation. “I came home and it was gone.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” said DLM. “Can you wait till the morning? Okay, never mind,” she said, quickly reconsidering. “I’ll do it.”

Profuse thanks on my part.

Three minutes later, DLM appears before me on her scooter. “Found it. Here it is.” She mimics handing me a large object.

“Where was it?”

“Well,” said DLM, “actually, my friend took it.”

“Your friend took it?”

“Yes,” said DLM. “She went into your house but she thought it was her house and she was hungry and she wanted a snack, so she put the TV in her bag for later.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “She thought my TV was a snack?”

“Well, yes,” said DLM. “She was wondering… she was carrying the bag… she was wondering why her snack was so heavy…”

“Detective Little M,” I said, “that is the most preposterous story I have ever heard.”

“What’s pres…posterous?”

“It means unbelievable,” I said.

“Well, Grammie…” said DLM. She looked intently into the middle distance, as if an explanation were hanging there, ripe with logic, waiting to be plucked. After a moment, she returned her gaze to me: “My friend was drunk.”

“That,” I said, “explains everything.”

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Speaking of losing things, I gave a talk in Tokyo last week at a private club. Most of the women were expats from one place or another. I was struck by their enthusiastic response to HNTFUYF—and how much they said they needed to hear about the insidious ways our beauty culture (and Asian beauty culture even more ferociously) can unhappily influence our self-image, self-confidence, and overall self-regard.

A couple of women close to my age brought up the issue of loss vis-a-vis an aging face, which got me thinking about the more difficult feelings we have about our maturing appearance, ones I don’t often write about. Take a look at the actor Kathryn Grody’s brilliant clip on TikTok (it inspired a one-woman play she’s written and performs), where she vivaciously captures some of our more conflicted moments. A reminder: Acknowledging and expressing our rage and grief—feelings that are so understandable!—contributes to the complexity and richness of our wisdom.

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