How old am I?
I peer inside myself, deep deep down, but really, the first shallow answer to that question is the same answer after I’ve dived into the well of my soul.
I am 482.
Perhaps older, but in our strange culture of age and the importance of youth, this number will suffice. Continue reading
I’m not great at looking at things logically. I’m not good at anything that entails studying one point and logistically figuring out how it’s supposed to connect to the other point. I prefer the intricacies in between. The emotional connections, let’s say, instead of the linear ones.
That’s why I’ve been a bit morose this week. A logistical, practical woman would think, it’s my son’s birthday– hooray. I, on the other hand, have been teary-eyed. Thirty-five years ago my little boy was born 10 days too late and too big to come out the ‘normal’ way. I tease him that it explains his personality.
Back then, as labor pains progressed and I was stretched out on the surgery table, I insisted that the doctor could not perform the caesarian until the mirror above me was placed just so. Just so I could watch the baby’s birth. I was tied down and could only see the ceiling and eyes staring out of the doctor’s mask. But I needed some control, so no cutting until the mirror was adjusted. Continue reading
My mom shows her great-grandson how to eat cake.
The subject of aging seems to fascinate my daughter and son and their spouses. Most particularly,
A bd cake, no matter how you slice it.
…my aging. And my guy’s.
I haven’t figured out why. Perhaps it’s because of my upcoming birthday on the Ides of March.
They seem to expect some kind of terror in our response to their teasing, asking if we have “chair rails” on our new stairs – ha ha, and telling us that perhaps my guy is eligible to use the town’s “senior center.”
A Singing BD Cake Delivery
Never mind that both of us are crazy busy in our careers and our social life. Continue reading
“I luuuv your hair,” my daughter’s friend says to me. “You’re so lucky to have so much of it. And the color and natural highlights! Just luscious.”
Luscious? First of all, who calls an over-50-year-old’s hair, luscious? Only another woman, of course, and at 30-something, a rather naïve woman.
(I note, by the way, that her hair is teenage blonde, straight and long, pulled into a perky ponytail as she shuttles her kids form soccer to ballet to gymnastics.)
But I digress. Continue reading
Frederick Carl Frieseke,
Femme qui se Mire
Early in the morning, and she’s already been up for half an hour, writing. Her eyes show it: glazed light blue icing, or are they dazed? Slightly bloodshot, with puffy fleshy bags underneath her lower lids.
She remembers when the bags underneath her eyes, rare and only after long bouts of studying or handling petulant babies, were smooth. But now, lines are etched at the bottom of the puffiness. They won’t be as visible after she washes her face with cold water and walks briskly in the fall air, but still, they’re always there now. Continue reading
