OVER THE FENCE

Conversations with Women

 

My waist is thick; my breasts sag and I feel invisible.  That about sums up the physical aspects of being seventy-three.

I try to walk thirty minutes a day as prescribed by Dr. Oz, but my bum knee usually stops me mid way.  And yet this voice inside me yearns to move forward, quickly:  to take on a new challenge, be loved, make love, and shine in my husband’s eyes.

My mind is rich with experience, with the wisdom that comes from having lived a whole life, but I want more.  Why can’t these years be more than the prescribed notion of the 60s, 70s, 80s?  Why can’t I leave the gray stands in my hair and not be recognized as nothing more than an old person.

For months now I have ruminated over these questions.  Everyone said, just leave it alone, it will come to you.  The “universe” will let you know what you are to do.  Well perhaps in the end that was true, because the day I wrote “A Wednesday Morning in April,” my life began to change.  That day led me to create this blog so I could communicate with women who are frozen on the road or moving in the same direction, going through this difficult yet wondrous process called aging.  Difficult because it challenges us with a pain here, a tightness there, some hypertension and questions about the future.  Wondrous because life is laid open to us.  No more pretense.  We can come from a clear and lucid place within ourselves and judge how we want to spend the last decades of our lives.

But the day I wrote “A Wednesday Morning in April,” I didn’t think life was so wondrous.  I was thinking:  “What now?”  I hope you’re willing to take a few minutes to read the piece and to walk this path with me.

A  Wednesday Morning In April

I am having my upper lip waxed in a room where the walls have been painted a stirring melon and the trim a sullen mauve.  Amazingly, the colors temper each other. 

I inhale deeply, the pillow under my neck absorbing the heavy morning, the headache that awakened me, the desire to sleep again.  It is only ten o’clock and I want to lie here for as long as they will let me while her fingers work methodically, first applying a light covering of talcum, next a layer of hot wax about two fingertips in length, then the fabric, then the pull that tears the small dark hairs from their roots.  I think of the smoothness when it will be done.

It is only 10:15.  I have earned this freedom they tell me.  And yet, the expanse of it causes me to stop as I lower myself into my car.  Anywhere…you can drive anywhere, I tell myself.  I head home.

It is cold and windy with faint raindrops every few minutes.  I heat the breakfast coffee in the microwave.  It is still warm from the morning but I heat it anyway, waiting for that certain temperature that mimics the first sip of the day.  The gutter is running over and covers the French doors with a sheet of rain.  Have to get that fixed, I think and then turn to the kitchen. 

The blue bowls from Martha’s Vineyard are still in the sink, soaking last bits of oatmeal before they go into the dishwasher.  I swish them with a small scrub brush and load them into the washer with juice glasses and used coffee cups.  I wash the pale blush counters with hot sudsy water and rinse with an old bar clothe. 

The rain begins to slow and a glimmer of sun tips the rickrack plant on the windowsill.  Things are in place.  I walk to the French doors.  What to do, what to do. 

 

Please let me know about you.

 

Christina