Wading in the gene (cess)pool

How's that for a topic?

Monday's Oprah dealt with women who look younger than their age. They looked great, with bright smiles, good outlooks on life and doing what they wanted to do. New clothes, new hairstyles, new hair color, all courtesy of the show... heck, I'd look younger than I am, too.

I hope.

My mother looked younger than she was. This was partly due to being very overweight so there were no wrinkles. She also had great skin and had finally accepted her white hair, something she had fought from her 30s. It was great hair, even at her death at 75. Not that she had an enviable gene pool: the women in the old family pictures tended to obesity and arthritis, both of which she inherited. But somewhere, there was great hair and skin also.

So I was thinking that good as all those women in their 40s and 50s looked on Oprah, they had waded in some good gene pools too. Even without the extras, they had a leg up.

We can't, of course, help which gene pool we've been drawn from, the clear ph-corrected swimming pool or the cesspool. I got my mother's hair, including its prematurely gray-ness, and her skin. I also got her arthrits; my hands are turning--quite literally--into hers. I fight her proclivity to gain weight, but I exercise, something she was loathe to do. Let me correct that: something she never did. She wouldn't walk across the room for a glass of wine if someone could be coerced into fetching it for her.

From the other half of my gene pool, I seem to have Daddy's good blood chemistrys and a second dose of good skin from his maternal grandmother, a woman I met when she was nearing 90. I can only hope I haven't been stuck with his Alzheimer's.

There's no sense in worrying about it. I need to keep a good attitude just like the fortunate women on Oprah.

And I could do something about the hair color.