What to wear? When you’re a teenager, your body keeps reinventing itself, so you’re never sure what the mirror is going to tell you next. All of a sudden, your clothes don’t fit. And your skin has an appalling tendency to break out at the worst times. You and your friends eye each other to see who’s looking the most mature. (Ever been to a seventh-grade play? Half the class look like women and the other half look like little girls.)

Then you grow up and your body (relatively) stabilizes for a few decades, until middle age sets in. Again you stop recognizing the person in the mirror! Now you and your peers glance at each other to see who is getting wrinkled and who has put on the most middle-aged spread. It takes more and more makeup to look less and less beautiful!

Wrinkles are a small price to pay for the nachas of grandmotherhood. But while teenagers are like buds starting to bloom, I’m starting to feel like a rose whose petals are turning brown around the edges. It’s disconcerting because there’s such a disconnect in my mind between my chronological age, and the age I am in my head (which is at most in my forties). We associate beauty with youth. It takes some recalibrating to feel good about presenting as an older person.

But Hashem wants us to look our ages. Rabi Elazar ben Azarya was made to look old because age, for Jews, should elicit respect. I think that’s why the lady dressed like a teen bothered me. An older person ought to dress the part of a person who has acquired wisdom and dignity over her lifetime.

I had the zechus to interview Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis two years before she was niftar. She was frail and needed a walker to get around. But her fire was undimmed, her enthusiasm contagious, and she showed up perfectly coiffed and made-up, in a casual but stylish sweater and skirt. Her grandchildren had festooned her walker with shiny streamers and ribbons.

When I think about moving into old age, I think of Rebbetzin Jungreis. Always perfectly groomed, dressed in an age-appropriate way, and still passionate about her family, her teaching, her life. That’s the way to do it, I thought. We can’t stop the clock. We can only strive to live each stage at our personal best, with dignity, zest, and hopefully a little style.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 919)