Ageless

Prompt: 24 minutes: “Ageless”

May 16, 2013

 Ageless

Ageless is how I feel at 53. Such an odd number — not sexy, not old and wise, somewhere in between. Reaching back, just a bit, I am vibrant, sexy, the life of the party. Sparkly, beaming on the outside, in the prime of life supposedly. Yes, I did it well. Successful woman of the ’80’s in a man’s world, my daddy proud. Then I stopped that and became a mom.

Now there’s an ageless, timeless role. It begins so innocently, naively really. Tenderly rocking and offering love from your very breasts in the wee, dark hours of the morning. Pondering life, the confusing, terrifying, glorious miracle of birth, a new life, now dependent on you. Ill-prepared, you read books, ask mothers, doctors, friends — eager to shed a light on the footpath of this ageless endeavor.

And now, decades later, it is still an enigma. Well, that’s not totally true. I’m much less frantic at this stage. Yet less dogmatic than my own mother, stating her opinions as if the are THE right way. Some truths, comments, ideas of hers ring true, timeless, ageless. Then there are the ones you just can’t help but bite your tongue about, realizing she is of another generation, another world, that it is fruitless to try to explain, kinder to let her speak, believe, let her be.

At 53 I am standing in the middle of the road, the intersection of life, spinning, looking up at the cloudless sky, tall pines and oaks sprinkling sunlight all around the cool shadows of time and space. Not ready to commit to a particular path, I choose to linger in this ageless place.

At Ageless, there is an appreciation for the older, wiser; an understanding of the ignorance of youth; a fear when you read the obituaries and many of them are younger than you now. At Ageless, there is still the hope of accomplishing something big, tell me it’s not loo late! To write that book, learn that craft, make that art that might endure even after I am gone — mere ashes on a mantle or floating in the sea. The sea, you see, IS ageless.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the spirit lives on, the only “real” ageless I guess there is. A soul calling to meld with the nebulous spirit of eternity. Yet while I am in this earthly body, where I can talk to my daughters, listen to my parents, pet my old soul dog, make a marriage work, get outside myself, dig deep inside myself, tap into that ageless stream of life in the intersection of middle-age, I play in the scintillating, ever-moving patches of flickering light.