A love letter to joints

I still get a kick out of them

Do you remember back in the early 2000s, when Demi Moore was no longer famous for her movie roles, which seemed to have dried up, but for her marriage to a younger man? From then on, any news snippet featuring a forty-something Moore would be about her body parts - specifically, which ones she was getting lasered, suctioned, injected, stretched and restitched to hold back the years and keep her hot guy.

Moore’s body had always come before her skills as far as entertainment media was concerned, but a corner had been turned. Instead of being envied for her bone structure, swishy hair, husky voice or rock-hard GI Jane abdominals, she was now a desperate figure, mocked for trying to stay youthful for her thick-as-mince, twenty-something husband.

She may even have had her knees done. I definitely remember this as a news story. There must have been the usual side-by-side photo comparison of a younger Moore, with presumably uninteresting knees, next to the middle-aged Moore, whose knees continued to work fine but were somehow less acceptable to the rest of us. Look at the state of her, the magazine would have implied to me, barely out of my twenties at the time. Great face for 40, and nice rack, but those kneecaps are baggy AF.

Saggy: Demi's knees need work

A headline from The Standard newspaper, 13 April 2012

The message I took from this wasn’t that a woman just can’t win, but that Moore was vain as all get-out, and had married the wrong man. Who in their right mind would worry about how their knees looked? Since when was a knee anything but a protective hank of bone enclosing crucial tendons and ligaments? I didn’t remember ever being told I had hot knees, or that my knees were the windows to my soul. My knees never got me across the line into a loving relationship, and nor were somebody else’s knees ever the reason for that relationship breaking up. Plus, who even knew that facelifts were a thing, for knees?

Only somebody like Moore, I reasoned then, would notice the decline of her knee skin: somebody too preoccupied with themselves. Somebody who, if they were so worried about it, could simply wear long pants for the rest of her life. There was no tragedy here.

I’ve given knees solidly zero thought since then. I’ve no idea what else I’ve been thinking about all this time, but it hasn’t been my knees. Still, this past summer, walking the darned dog, I looked down at my exposed legs and noticed the skin over my kneecaps was scrunching with every step.

It was as if they were about to sneeze, if you can picture that. Each knee screwed up in awful anticipation of impact and when each footstep had landed, they smoothed out with relief.

So here we were. Fifty-one, no prior convictions, and I had Demi Moore knees. And so it begins, I probably said out loud; only the dog would have heard me.

Now that’s what I call patellae

My joint health is terrific, by the way. I’ve had the odd niggle in the last few years - one frozen shoulder, followed by the other, which was random bad luck really, according to the physiotherapist who treated me. It didn’t mean I was getting old, or anything. IT DIDN’T MEAN I WAS DETERIORATING.

(As an aside, I truly recommend the most heavy-duty remedy available for persistent frozen shoulder, which is to have saline injected into the joint, along with pain-relieving cortisone. I mean, it’s no picnic. It has to be done by a specialist, guided by x-ray, so be prepared to lie in a paper gown in a morgue-like room while a doctor in a flak jacket says menacing things like, “I’m going in now.”

As the fluid is injected you feel you’re filling and gaining pressure, like a human balloon. I wanted to lift off the table and float upwards, and not in a groovy way. Afterwards, the image on the monitor was unsettling - the moment the needle went deeply into my body. Nobody wants to see themselves invaded, or to be shown their own rack of bones, but the whole thing was worth it to have full range of motion returned to my arm. Now I could do up my zip at the back!)

Wrinkly, knobbly, saggy - meet the celebs going weak at the knees!

Daily Mail, 12 June 2012

I wonder if my startled feeling, followed by vague doom, is how Demi Moore felt on the day she noticed her kneecaps were going. Unlike her, I’ve no urgent need to disguise mine. Paps aren’t waiting for me in the bushes, and unlike Moore’s drongo ex, my husband refuses to acknowledge any age-related bodily changes in me, even if I point them out. "You’re still a racehorse,” he’ll say to me, without looking up from his phone. (This can’t be possible. We met back in 2009, and even Bonecrusher lost form within five years.)

Also, I’m appreciative of what my knees do for me and what my knees might do to other people, now I’m learning karate moves. My knees aren’t out to betray me. They’re doing their job, as they’ve always done. I don’t need them whipped out and titanium put in. But that said, if my knees are starting to scrunch, what will I notice next?

An extremely niche novelty mug, currently available on Etsy

I suppose middle age is the fulcrum of life, where typical, resilient good health tips into the Frozen Shoulder Years, followed by those of the Scrunching Knees and Saggy Neck. Somewhere around this time, all your earlier lifestyle choices start coming home to roost - those fatty meats or cigarettes, years of late nights, all the cheap pairs of heels with no cushioning, the party drugs or drinks, or even simply too many muffins or whatever pleasures you enjoyed when your thyroid, kidneys and pancreas worked better than they might now.

Even the active people start feeling it in their fifties, with their shin-splints and I don’t know, not being someone in danger of this problem, their blown Achilles. And the beauty mistakes show up for a sit-down party as well: the fried ends from too many dye jobs, the melanin patches from not enough sunscreen, the eyebrows that dwindle into nothing after too many goes with the tweezers.

I find myself noticing the creamy smoothness of my children’s arms, and how comparatively freckled and rough mine have become. Their hands are unmarked, while mine are spotted with cooking burns and dry from household detergents. In family photos I can already see how different I looked merely ten years ago, with curlier hair and a less worn, more open expression. I try not to look at photos much. Yet still, I have to tell you - my body is a wonderland. I’ve never felt more kindlier towards or more grateful for it than I do now.

For one thing, it works, and I’m here. I may not fit my wedding dress, but that girl was too thin anyway. I’ve more strength and stamina now and health, as they say, is your wealth. I take none of it for granted, being Class of 72. I’ve friends who never made it this far.

Also, this body protects me, dramatically at times, from coeliac disease. I’ve learned to give in during those moments, not to struggle, and to trust my body to take the right steps. Its wisdom is reliable.

I’ve begun noticing my father’s face in my reflection, mainly in my eyes and jaw. Even in repose he always seemed on the brink of a grin. He’s been gone for more than four years, but now I can look for him whenever I pass a mirror. Age has given that to me.

I like the subconscious relief I sense in other people, in shops or small encounters, when they understand they’re sharing public space with me: a fifty-something woman, capable of so many things, and a figure of reassurance in the community, however retrograde that is.

At a vague and general time of threat and scarcity, I feel symbolic to other people of something else. I haven’t quite figured this out, but there’s some kind of low, gentle thrum of readiness, of knowledge and quick-wittedness, that midlife and senior women bring to a place (be it a house, office, or institution. We certainly bring it to our families). There’s a basic humanity, maybe because we spend more time with people who need us - the very young, and the very old. Governments and markets choose not to assign this generosity of spirit any value, but unmistakably it’s there. I appreciate it when I sense it in other women and increasingly, I appreciate it in myself.

Yes, I feel fondness and a vague sort of love - not just for my own ageing body, but for my generation. In the privacy of our bathrooms and bedrooms, at the dentist or doctor, we must be starting to experience these strange detachments, now and then, as our bodies acquire more tells - clues of the eventful lives we’ve lived from childhood until now. We’ve had a ride so far, haven’t we? And the ride goes on, with its hills and hollows. But we’re purposefully slowing down just a little, because less speed improves the view.

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Epilogue

You know, I wrote this a day before posting, but felt it wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit my midlife humanity regularly wears thin. I was driving my son to school this morning and had to brake a couple of times for maniacs, including a heavily bearded driver who pulled a sudden U-turn in front of us.

“For God sakes,” I spat, as I swerved to avoid him. “People SUCK.”

“Wow,” said George, from the backseat. This made me ashamed of my crummy self-control but luckily for me, shame is just an emotion, and quickly passed.

“Twat,” I said next.

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