I spoke to a nurse today who kept staring at me after she asked my age (59 in a couple of weeks) and promptly went into shock when I stepped on the scales and weighed 30 pounds more than she had guessed. I keep trying to tell people that I am a spirit having a physical experience of life, rather than a physical being who occasionally has a spiritual experience, so I've decided that people tend to see my young and light soul, rather than the aging cookie-stuffed carcass that I walk around in. When I am complimented on my hair color I reply, "For four dollars a month, we can be twins." I do exaggerate. (Sometimes the shade I use goes on sale for 2/$5.) When asked if I am Irish I reply, "That, too, as well as German, English and Native American (Penobscot)." I dare anyone to get this hair to curl! I've been asked to leave hair salons by the back door and had one stylist cry real tears when he tried to give me a short haircut, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" I explained to the poor man that it was only hair and it would grow back in. How was he to know that it wanted to grow straight up and out? A rose by any other name may indeed be a rose, but I looked more like a red dandelion. That was 20 years ago when it was thicker and punk was in, so I got away with it until it grew. I was the Cowlick Kid as a child. Age has been kind to me. My face fell into a nice position. I like crows' feet. (Crow Medicine means to answer to a higher authority, and my God laughs with me.)Last year I spent some time with a man who was younger than my daughter, and at a point when I was annoyed with him I said, "You want to know what I will look like in my old age? You are looking at it!" He was six foot four and I am five foot three. I said,"There isn't a man alive who has the right to talk down to me!" He got the message. Respect. It's an old fashioned word often misused. It means a healthy fear of loss. What we respect we treat well.
My father used to call me feisty. I thought it was a compliment that meant I was honest and out spoken. I don't think that's what he meant, but in his old age, he was glad that I was who I was. When I ride shot gun, the stage arrives on time.
My mother told me that no one changes after thirty. Others told me it's all down hill after fifty. Doctors told me that I would never conceive children. After my daughter was born they said all babies are miracles, but her birth was even more of a miracle than most because it was impossible for me to conceive. I enjoyed telling that story to my son who was born eight years later. Doctors told me in 1966 that I would be blind in ten years if I didn't have an operation, which I elected not to have. My eyesight has improved dramatically as I have aged. After surgery for cancer a young doctor hollered, "This is not possible!" I had six months healthy tissue in six weeks. For most of my life I've heard, "You can't say that! You can't do that!"
They lied to me. I can and I do. Life is an adventure.
That's a little of who I am. Come back again. I've been around for years. That's just a tiny tip of the iceberg!
