Getting On
A #FastFictionFriday Story
This morning when I was reaching into the refrigerator for the half & half for my third cup of coffee, I saw my mother’s hand. Not the small, frail hand that I had held while she was dying, but the hand that showed me how to swaddle my newborn son, the one that poured the wine on our girls’ nights. She would have been about my age around then. While I didn’t see her as old at the time, she was an age I couldn’t imagine being. And yet here I am.
But when I look in the mirror, I just see me. To my eye I don’t look much different than I did ten years ago or fifteen years ago. It’s a trick, though. The changes are there, of that I am sure. But they come on slowly and subtly, acclimating you to one slightly new normal after another. You could say it’s insidious, cruel. But it’s probably the gentlest way. Imagine going to bed one night looking a young, vibrant 40 and then waking up to the lines and sagging jowls of 60? Life would have to stop while you tried to adjust to your new (old) face and body. No, slow and steady is a kindness nature bestows on us.
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I’ve been told I am aging gracefully but I don’t think I know what that means. Do I look good? Or am I just handling the changes really well? Maybe a little of both. You see, I don’t feel old at all. I am middle-aged but my spirit has existed for at least a thousand years so I am still firmly in my prime. My heart is light like a young girl’s, my mind is sharp like a young woman’s, and my body… well, it’s holding its own.
But I still see my mother in flashes, in ways I never did when I was younger. The curve of my belly, the way my skin looks when I am cold, even my handwriting is beginning to look more like hers. And yet I am not her. But I’m not, not her. I am parts of her and parts of my father but both fight to be noticed. I don’t look like either of them; I look like both of them, yet I only look like me.
There are times when I feel as if I am disappearing — into my mother, into obscurity. The world doesn’t appreciate older women, ones with experience and expertise. It tells us we are only worth what’s on the surface. But old or young we hold more than anyone, even ourselves, can imagine. As we grow older we find that our selves begin to fit more comfortably than they ever have, that we can stand in them more firmly and surely than when we were only just getting to know them. It’s a great privilege to get to this place, I know that. Embracing it is the only justice I can do it.
Thanks to Jennie Edwards for her inspiration, aging.
Like it? Clap (up to 50 times) and comment. Want more? Check out my short story collections: A Month of Sundays: Stories of Love & Loss, and You Can’t Get There From Here: Stories.
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