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It's The Hands, Baby.

I used to know what old was.
As a child, my parents were old.
My grandparents were decrepit.

As a teenager, nothing changed much: parents = old, grandparents = even more decrepit.

In my 20s and 30s, my parents graduated to “older”, not quite old, but definitely circling the runway. My grandparents, now in their late 80s, were no longer just decrepit. They were… venerable. Or maybe just really old, with extra creaks.

By the time I hit my 40s and 50s, my “oldness gauge” completely malfunctioned. Suddenly, men in their 70s were old-ish but still dating. Women were harder to gauge, thanks to facelifts, fillers, Botox, and the invention of “youthful glow in a syringe.”

So, I adjusted. I created a new gauge: I started looking at hands.
Faces lie. Hands don’t.

Young hands are beautiful. They’re smooth and plump. The fingers move effortlessly, the joints supple. Their grasp is firm. They look lovely adorned with rings and bracelets, even better when wrapped around a chocolate bar.

Middle-aged hands are what I call useful. Still smooth, but now a few veins are rising to the surface. They’ve seen things. They’ve typed, cooked, signed mortgages, lifted weights, clenched in frustration. The fingers are still nimble, though maybe a bit stiffer in the morning. Perhaps not as many rings and bracelets now, they get in the way of life.

Old hands? I think they’re works of art. They tell stories. You can read a life in the wrinkles, the sunspots, the veins like little rivers under the skin. The fingers rest in a soft curve now, not from fatigue, but from grace.
They bruise easily. Hey! Where did that come from?
And they’ve earned every freckle and fold.

These are my hands now. Maybe a ring or two. Bracelets? Oh yes, they’re doing a little extra work these days, covering age spots and adding sparkle. I do love my sparkle!

I’ve stopped chasing young hands. I moisturize more often. But I don’t hide them. I look at them with a kind of affection now, like old friends who’ve stuck around through every chapter. They’ve earned their history, even if they didn’t know they were creating history at the time.

If you look at my face, you’ll see a face that had “a bit of work done” in my 50s.
Not too bad at 70.
Then, look at my hands.
They’ll tell you I’m old.
Proudly old. With proud hands.