Land of Ageless Beauty

Stephen wakes up wondering why he is in a malaise.  After traveling from east coast to west, we have landed in Old Town Pasadena to begin a long weekend of wedding festivities for my son.   This boy, errr, young man, is tall, lanky and fit.  His wife to be is a just-graduated dietician, tall, lanky and fit.  They appear to be a good match.  We are also a good match, short, squat, aging gracefully (or so we believe), trying to suck in tummies that have enjoyed a bit of too much good living in our lives.

We sit in the sparsely decorated room of our discount hotel (trying to save money to sleep in order to splurge on the great food and wine in this town) going through the list of why we are feeling a little blurry and disconnected.  The easy answer would be jet lag, since we were awake at 3 a.m. eastern daylight time in order to be on a 6:15 a.m. flight to arrive at LAX at 11 a.m. and being another day anew.  But I think it is more than that.

I grew up out here.  This is the land of Hollywood, the culture defining aura of “you are what you drive, how you look, where you dine.”  The women are beautiful, slender, manicured, muscular (but not too muscular, lest the definition of muscle overpower the softness of unblemished skin).  The men are buff, robust, solid.  Youth extends to infinity through the magic hands of plastic surgeons and personal trainers.  It is difficult to tell substance from image.  There are loads of Mercedes and BMWs on the streets connoting a sense of wealth and well-being, and I always wonder about the back-story.  Are they living in shared apartments on the western fringes of downtown (not quite West L.A.) in order to give the appearances that have come to define California culture and maintain a car payment that is more than the rent?  And why not, people spend a lot of time in their cars out here — probably more than they spend at home!

Over dinner, we talk about the State being bankrupt, issuing vouchers for future payments of goods and services.  Yet, the sky is blue and there is barely a layer of smog over the city today.  This is a “there will be a better day” atmosphere.  The cafes along Colorado Boulevard are filled with diners sipping good wine and nibbling at calamari appetizers before ordering the blackened grouper or rare steak.  The four hundred thousand dollar weddings are still being booked at the Huntington Gardens (though not the wedding I will attend which will be in the public park).

There is a thirty minute wait at 21 Flavors of Frozen Yogurt.  The queue along the sidewalk and around the corner is about thirty people long.  They are all young, ageless, eager, a melange of Asian and Latino and European and African mix of couples or representing the blending of a prior generation of intermarriage, all beautiful and ageless.  After our dinner of a delicious Japanese dinner on the sidewalk cafe at Kabuki, I glance longingly across the street for a frozen yogurt.  Stephen pats my rear and says honey, we don’t need it.  I know he is right, and I feel out of place, out of touch with the land of my beginnings.  I am no longer part of this.  I meander with a camera around my neck, silver hair prominent among those with copper highlights, flat and serviceable shoes juxtaposed against the click of stilettos on the sidewalk.  I am a tourist now and with this realization, some shame overcomes me.  I no longer belong in the land of my youth, the land of ageless beauty, and then realize that this may not be a bad thing.