What a Privilege

As a child, I mistakenly believed that older people chose to have stiff backs, wrinkles on their faces, and veins like small, fat snakes on either hand. I grew up convinced that getting older was some distant destination on some horizon uncharted. Just as I took one step in front of the other, I’ve taken thousands of steps and walked thousands of miles. I’ve journeyed long and hard over multiple decades, traversing life’s highways. Now, getting older has arrived. I stand in front of the mirror and look at my face. In my mind’s eye it is still the youthful face my mother kissed decades ago. The mirror tells me otherwise. Part of me wants to erase all the lines, wind back the clock, and begin again with lessons learned. Yet, another part of me loves every crease, for each one is a part of who I’ve become—no longer a girl, but a wife, stepmother, aunt, and grandmother who yearns to live with compassion, kindness, grace, hope, and humility. My face is the face of someone who’s lived, loved, grieved, and suffered like metal being cast. This wrinkling face is symbolic of all of that and is part of who I am. I pause, realizing these wrinkles are just wrinkles over my soul, a part of me that has never aged a day, immortal as it is. My eyes still sparkle, and I still dance though my legs are slower. Music and words still move as much as they ever did, and I live as passionately and fiercely as anyone of younger years. I sit beside the dwindling fire and think. Where did the shooting stars go? They flitted across the childhood sky. Adulthood arrives, no longer looking upward. Like Hailey’s Comet Life darted by in the nighttime sky. Old age arrives, no longer rushing through the days now gone by. Accepting the pilgrim soul Loving the sorrows upon one’s changing face surely must be grace. Making an honorable pact with solitude Loving the nostalgia within one’s heart truly must bring peace. Aging is a privilege, I conclude, a privilege to be embraced!