Cycles
Numbers don't matter, on that I'm clear. Perhaps I'm still grasping at adulthood, trying to join the club.
Grey creeps and I try to see the beauty in it, shuffling through mental images of silver clad wizened women, their earned confidence radiating. I see my Mom's never-died raven being salted, and how graciously she welcomed it.
But sometimes I think my bedroom mirror belongs in a fun house, distorting what I "know" of myself, ups down, ins out. Ripples of unacknowledged vanity outing themselves as sand-supported pillars of my confidence and I begin to realize some part of me wonders if what I am is sufficient once the roses wilt.
As a teen I remember the disdain with which I viewed the grown woman with the mini skirt and the big hair, wondering why she couldn't let that go, and now I see that narrow path between grasping and giving up.
Graciously, my concept of age has shifted with my own, but my memory is strong enough to see myself through the eyes of the young in flashes here and there and wonder who is right.
Perhaps this is the earning. Perhaps this is a late-entered rite of passage. Can I tell myself the other side of this is peace? Can I hope for acceptance without inattention?
I'm watching for step stones on this tender journey between unearned beauty of youth and hard won beauty of age, all the while watching my daughter bloom into her own beauty and start the cycle all over again.
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