THE OLD LADY IN THE MIRROR

No matter how much time I spend on my face, my hair, my clothes, the same tired old lady looks back at me from the mirror. It's always a shock because it's still ME inside and I don't know who that stranger is. At some point in life your body becomes your enemy. It betrays and diminishes you. It intimidates and disheartens you. It refuses to perform it's usual tasks with it's usual grace. It rebels, it stalls, it shuts you down. It hammers your joints and weakens your senses. Age is an indignity and rife with booby traps. Age aggravates more body parts than you ever knew you had. As Bette Davis once said, "old age ain't for sissies."

In Favor of a Flat Earth

A flat earth would be quite comfortable to live in. Picture gardens, lakes, ponds, pathways, wandering sheep, rice paddies. Trees would be okay as long as they weren’t too large - no giant Sequoias that might upset the balance and cause the earth to tilt. No huge oceans with giant waves to bring harm and destruction or to get lost in. Hills and mountains, especially high jagged peaks would add interest but would also complicate things: they would have to be climbed, they could perhaps be hidden in, and they cast huge shadows. There is serenity in sameness. A flat earth would be quite safe and comforting. But then someone would probably come along and tell us that not only is the earth round, it spins and orbits! What a dizzying thought!

Family

It's such a warm sunny feeling being with family. I try to retain a visual image of such moments over the years. If I work at it, I can even add a sound track and the feeling of love and contentment that went with it. I would like it to happen more often, but maybe then I wouldn't appreciate it quite so much. I seem to have to readjust every so often to the ages of everyone. Especially the younger ones. Just as you get to know them as toddlers, they become teen-agers

and then adults. At each stage along the way, it's like getting to know a whole new person. But so far, I've loved every one of them at each and every stage.