whatever: I, too, seem to have been blessed with decently good genes in the aging department. My mom is almost 90 and her face is still relatively unlined; she looks perhaps 15-20 years younger.

My brother is 70 and doesn’t look it, either. Who knows, though, perhaps we’ll age in a day like your neighbor.

My personal observation is aging is a step function – you grow old all at once. My bachelor neighbor way back was a swinging 60s guy bringing home 40 year old divorcees. One day I look out at he is hobbling along hunched over a walker with a hump in his back. This is totally serious, it was like he aged 20 years in a day.

When I was much younger, I was cursed with a sort of baby face that made me look younger than I really was. I got carded regularly into my mid- to late-twenties. It sometimes made it hard to be taken seriously. But my looks gradually caught up with my age, and now I think I look every bit my real age.

People who look younger than their age for decades may have that depressing moment when all of a sudden they look their real age, or older. There also may be the disconcerting Benjamin Button period when one looks both very old and very young.

Caroline Kennedy’s aunts didn’t age very well either. Neither have her female cousins (Kerry Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, Maria Shriver). How much is aging badly and how much is losing the bloom of youth on features that were there all along is hard to say.

I think there’s a great deal in this. I am 70 and my skin definitely looks it — mostly the result of genetics, plus youthful recklessness about sun exposure. But l’m often told that I look young for my years. After a recent doctor visit, I checked the clinical notes in my medical records portal and was tickled pink to discover that the doctor had written that I appeared much younger than my stated age!

I promise you, it’s not my face. It’s got to be attitude, energy, and genetic luck that has so far kept me mostly free of chronic health issues. But I’ll take it!

Sometimes family resemblances can be spooky.
(1) As one of our sons aged (before he got too pudgy!), it became apparent that he was a near-clone of my father, although he hadn’t seemed that similar to daddy’s childhood pictures.
(2) At my mother’s funeral, when her 10-years-younger sister paid her respects at the open casket, Aunt P. said in some surprise, “I never realized that she looked just like Granny G.!”

@ Ruth H > “As a really elderly person who didn’t show age for a very long time,’

You are in a lucky minority! I was talking Sunday to a friend about her recent birthday and she remarked that she had turned 80, which I didn’t know. I had always thought she looked to be the same age as myself, in the early 70s.