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| 20, blonde, and slim as a whippet. |
I am beginning to look like someone I do not know. It’s an
odd feeling to glance down at my own hands and suddenly recognize my mother’s.
I look in the mirror and am surprised to see not the reflection of my inner
vision, twenty and blonde, smooth-skinned and slim as a whippet, but a seventy-two
year old woman with streaks of silver at her temples and fine lines around her
eyes. My skin is freckled with what my grandmother called age spots and my
dermatologist calls sun damage. My stride and my stamina are shortening. I go
to bed earlier and wish I could wake up later. I used to think people my age
were old. No one told me I’d get here and still think young.
I have lost a few things on my journey past middle age. I’ve
lost some of my absolute trust that things will always work out the way I want
them to. When I was a child I was the center of the universe. As an adult, I am
only the center of my own. I’ve had to move over and share with the rest of the
world. I’ve lost some of my blind trust in grown-ups, too. Some adults say
children are often cruel. They should know – they teach the lesson so
thoroughly. I’ve had to temper my trust with a healthy dose of oh yeah? Says
who? then hold up those other truths against my own hard-won notions.
It seems just yesterday that I was in high school. I can
still recall the excitement of commencement night, the feeling of standing in
an open doorway looking out on an infinite future. I was invulnerable,
impervious to harm, destined to fly. I’ve since lost the notion I can soar on
my own. I’ve learned I need the wind. I have gone past the middle of my earth
journey. I’ve grown from a clinging, needy infant dependent on other people for
my basic needs to adulthood and the frightening, freeing responsibility of
caring for myself. I’ve loved and been loved, hated and had it come back to
bite me, borne children and buried parents. I’ve faced fears head-on, I’ve let
places and things and hearts go that I would rather have hung onto. I’ve
allowed myself to become vulnerable and open to hurt so that when bliss comes,
and it does come, I can fill up and flow over. I’ve learned neither state lasts
forever.
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