Opinion: Aging Gracefully? Well ...

It's not as easy as it sounds.

After trying for many years not to be a cliché, I’ve come to realize it’s all been for naught. You cannot be middle-aged without also being a cliché. Your sight is worsening, your hearing as well. I cannot help but elicit eye-rolls from my sons because I can never decipher what they're mumbling unless they are facing me and moving their lips slowly like a Clutch Cargo cartoon. Even then, I have to ask for multiple do-overs and deal with the head shaking and "You should get your ears checked, Mom" comments. Someday, you won't be so smug, guys. Okay, so my hearing stinks. I went to too many concerts at the Spectrum: The Who, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Bruce, Loggins & Messina, Chicago, Prince. If it's their fault my audio system is going…

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Overlook Offers Free Skin Screening

Visitors to Millburn's pool see first hand the damage that's been done to their skin with the help of specialists from Overlook Hospital.

verlook Hospital met with more than two dozen visitors to the Millburn pool and offered them free skin screenings along with a lesson on harmful sun exposure.. Representatives from Overlook Medical Center and Atlantic Health Group let members of the public use the Dermaview Machine to see sun damage underneath the skin, which cannot be seen in a normal mirror. The group also educated people on how to better protect themselves in the future. “I was shocked [at the results],” said Mary Saggio, who came for the screening with her two daughters, 10-year-old Carly and nine-year-old Julia. “Although I’m a stickler [about using sunscreen now], I didn’t use it when I was young. We used to put oil on because we liked to be tan, even though a tan is…

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Motherhood in Millburn

Maturity is Wasted on the Old

With age comes wisdom, but that doesn't make it any easier sometimes.

I was very pretty once, but I took it for granted. I thought it was something that would always be part of me, like language or ethnicity. The color I applied to my hair as a novelty in my 20s and 30s is now applied to cover a stubborn streak of wiry grays now that I'm in my early 40s. I fell asleep in my makeup after spending nights in smoky clubs in my 20s, both of which the 40-year-old me could and would never do. The sunscreen I dismissed as a teenager is applied religiously every day, as is the eye cream meant to stave off the deepening of the lines that are slowly appearing. Having said that, I'm not an old hag, I look pretty darn good – wait for it – for my age. Yes there it is, the age disclaimer. I was carded once this summer …

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