In(di)visible by shana mclean moore
I can still see my mom’s strut as she maneuvered around memory care tethered to her shiny blue walker with its floral satchel affixed to the front. When she was happy, that girl of ours would sashay down those halls in a way that said, I’ve still got it, leaving all who witnessed her chuckling with delight as that bony butt of hers shook its way to the dining room.
It struck me then that, even five years into her Alzheimer’s journey, she still found a way to shine despite her advancing through a disease that diminishes people until they are dull. And beyond.
It was as if Mom was determined to prove her own self wrong the way she continued to charm a room. After all, she’s the one who once said to me, “The older you get, Shana, the more invisible you become.” Mom declared this morosely when I was about twenty and she forty-six, burning a dismal possible truth into my mind for future understanding.
If I didn’t have daughters, it might have taken me longer to understand what Mom meant. But once I had girls of my own who were old enough to turn a head, it felt like only a minute before I, myself, could not.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m currently killing it as I walk the halls of assisted living to visit my dad.
But by the time I, too, had reached the prophetic age of 46, strange things started happening that took me a while to understand. Some days, I would enter a shop or restaurant and receive the standard transactional customer service. Other times, I would be treated like I was wearing a Mystery Shopper badge on my lapel. On those days, it was all extra discount codes, extra fries, and extra charm. I would leave the establishment thinking, Gosh, what lovely customer service.
One day, as I wheeled up to the In N Out drive-thru, it suddenly all made sense. As I tried to pay for my family’s food, it was like the California surfer boy running the checkout turned Southern before my eyes. “How y’all doing today,” he enthused with a regionally inappropriate second-person plural while straining forward to look past me to include my collagenated daughter. “You two have a great day,” he added with unmistakable twinkle eyes.
Before that bag of greasy goodness could be transferred through my car window, I mentally rolled back the retail footage of the past few years and asked myself, aghast: Do you ever get exemplary customer service when you are alone, Shana?
This is precisely what my mom was warning me about.
I find this discovery somehow both enraging and, I suppose, very fucking expected in a culture that has always prioritized youth and beauty and men.
But since going about my errands while hissing like a sea hag isn’t exactly going to garner me any more favor, I have learned to stifle the rage and work with what I have.
“Why don’t you girls go on ahead and see if you can get us a table,” I suggest while I hang back on our walk toward the restaurant so that our mother-daughter trio might have a chance at a plum patio seat instead of one within smelling distance of the john.
At the airport, if my husband and I are trying to get an upgrade or, I don’t know, a rebooked flight that doesn’t involve three layovers, I always send him up for the job. It is not at all that I can’t or won’t do the task—it’s just that I want the results that his big male presence achieves better than my own. Again, I can be angry or my ass can fly directly to SFO without stopping in Salt Lake City and Seattle first.
The most confronting moment I’ve had with my diminishing cultural currency, though, happened in a moment when I was actually too visible for my own good. I had stopped at a fro-yo shop and while the man (who was no spring chicken himself) scooped strawberries into my cup of yogurt, he looked at me intently and said, “I bet you were pretty. I wish I could see you when you were young.”
Never one to be able to quip a comeback live, I tried to accept his words as a compliment and headed for home to eat my sweet treat that, like me, had suddenly turned a bit salty.
What I wish I had said that day was, good thing that would be the least interesting thing about me, Sir.
What is interesting about mature me is, first and foremost, the freedom I feel in no longer needing to try to be visible to the wrong people, meaning men other than my husband and young people other than my daughters. By being forced into retirement from the game of garnering the male gaze or any kind of attention of the full-gender spectrum of young people, I can instead focus my energy and time on the women of this certain age who share my priorities and interests.
The very thought that I used to put on makeup before doing a 7am Starbucks run in my thirties makes me chuckle now that I am in my mid-fifties and grab our weekend coffees without so much as a smudge check for makeup that missed the removal process overnight. I throw my hair in a ponytail and off I go… even at the risk of being called “sir,” which has happened more than once.
These days, I feel less concerned with how I look and more concerned with how I listen. I am more interested in reading books than knowing about celebrity gossip. I partake in talk about politics only with friends who already agree with me because I don’t want to be disappointed in people whom I otherwise like, since we’ll never change each other’s minds in this post-2016 era. I crave conversations about relationships and family and recoil at those about diets and beauty trends. I light up hearing about people’s lofty goals and adventurous travel plans.
Just the other night, I was reminded of how deeply satisfying it is to gather with women who feel the same shift in focus. Four of us sat around a table on our friend Wanda’s patio and enjoyed a delicious evening in every way. We drank a wise amount of wine and ate light fare that our husbands would have seen as a side dish while we caught up on life.
We heard about one friend’s walk along the Camino path in northern Spain, another friend’s writing for an organization that helps fund underserved communities, and about another’s stay in a rustic cabin in Montana with her complaining mother-in-law.
Then, Wanda handed out a deck of old-fashioned postcards and asked us to select one that inspired some creative thought and write about it. After twenty minutes of quiet writing time, we each shared what we came up with. The way each of our minds worked so differently in our approaches delighted us all.
I left her house thinking, This. THIS is what I need more of… to feel inspired, fed, creative, and seen.
I whisper this up to heaven: Together, Mama, we will never be invisible.
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Shana McLean Moore is the co-host of Essaying, founder of The Gigis, and the BFF of Marcia Livesay McLean (pictured here) from 1967-2022
