Sexy at 71

I'm getting all kinds of side-benefits from taking care of my mom while she's healing up. One is, it's changing how I think of old age.

She's 71. Her face is a little wrinkly. She's about 5'5", has always been slim and outdoorsy -- loves to hike, camp, beach-comb, scuba-dive. Now -- well, she looks European to me: a finer-boned, slightly smaller build than most Americans. She has never been overweight. Most of her life she weighed around 120; now I'd say she weighs maybe 165... but it looks like firm padding, not like fat.

I change her bandages and help her bathe, so I see her body a lot.

I always imagined old people looked, well, old. Saggy and crepey and icky-smelling. But she doesn't -- she looks firm and white and about the same as ever.

Amazing.

I can stop dreading aging. Assuming, of course, that I get active now, and stay that way.

In the hospital, the doctors reacted the same way. They thought she looked healthy and strong when she came in, and healthy and strong when she left.