The Time Design

November 3, 2017November 2, 2017 / roughwighting / 134 Comments

She experienced a strange sensation – one of light-headedness and a touch of nausea while at the same time feeling euphoric and frightened.

The combined emotions were oddly fascinating, and Sheila wondered vaguely if this is what it felt like to be tripping on a drug like LSD. But she looked around and acknowledged that she hadn’t moved since she stood in the center of the blackened room. She’d taken no pills or drinks. No mysterious fog or vapor filled the small quiet room. Yet, she felt out-of-sorts. Continue reading →

The Structure of My Being

March 10, 2017March 9, 2017 / roughwighting / 115 Comments

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 →

Breakfast at Every Meal

June 10, 2016June 10, 2016 / roughwighting / 117 Comments

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 →

Have Your Cake and EAT IT TOO

March 11, 2016March 9, 2016 / roughwighting / 86 Comments

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 →

A Luscious Shade of Young

December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 / roughwighting / 83 Comments

“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 →