An age-old question

In the lead up to your grandmother’s 90^th birthday party, there’s one conversation most people would not expect to need to have with her. 

“What are you wearing?” I asked my Gran over the phone this week. Her dinner party is tonight at her the local yacht club in Melbourne.

It’s not so much the question that’s unusual, but the reason behind having to ask it. You see, my 90-year-old grandmother and I have a remarkably similar wardrobe. And mine isn’t exactly full of floral blouses and floor-length pleated skirts.

“Well,” she said, “maybe a black dress with that Turkish-looking silver statement necklace. Or the bright orange silk top with the waist tie.”

Right, I thought, cross those off my list. I can’t very well turn up in the same thing as the birthday girl!

My grandmother may be fast approaching her centenary but she doesn’t consider herself a day over 30. When she sees me in something she likes (from skinny jeans to two inch heels) it’s off to the shops to buy the same outfit. Because why can’t she wear a figure-hugging pencil skirt? We are the same size, after all.

But far from looking silly in little black dresses and brightly-coloured tops, Gran can totally pull it off. This is a woman who plays tennis three times a week, cards like a shark, and is always the last one standing at happy hour.

Our family rented a holiday house last year for my mum’s birthday and my grandmother spent her time swanning around the pool in a fluro pink one piece swimsuit, cocktail in hand.

We’ve all heard that age is just a number but it’s not until you see the evidence sunbaking her toned figure after swimming a few laps that you can truly believe it.

On the flip side, I received birthday cards from some of my best girlfriends last month and they all said practically the same thing: “Ugh, we’re getting so old. How did this happen? How depressing!”

We’re 28. And I don’t feel old at all. I can’t possibly with my grandmother!

So what’s the difference? Is it that my girlfriends live in the city where they go to the same bars and clubs we did when we were 20 but now, instead of being the youngest there, they feel like the scene has frozen around them and only they are susceptible to the steady trickle of time? Is it that I live in Jan Juc, the suburb of perpetual Peter Pans, where some of my youngest friends are in their late 30s but we all live the same lifestyle because it’s paddle fitness and enthusiasm for life, not a number, that dictates how old you are down here?

But then, most of my grandmother’s friends are in their early 70s so, clearly, surrounding yourself with older people is clearly not the key to feeling youthful.

What is it that makes some women my age continuously point out their gradually forming wrinkles and lament their ever-so-slightly sagging bums while my grandmother dons a high cut one piece and a strut?

So I asked her, in the lead up to her 90^th year, what makes you feel so young? And she told me: “I just got too old to care what other people think.”

So there you are. It seems there’s a moment in time between 28 and 90 where you decide that you’re not a number but a person. A person who wears pink swimsuits and plays tennis three times a week and has the sharpest canasta skills south of Melbourne who just happens to be 90 today and will wear a little black dress and a statement necklace if she so pleases – after an outfit check with her granddaughter, of course.