How thin-skinned I have become in my autumn’s garden! My skin isn’t yet translucent, but it is prone to dry out, itch, and tear.

Too much information?

Sorry.

Aging is a new adventure every morning. I discover  which part of the old anatomy will not wake up, cooperate, or perform.  It becomes clearer that there’s an expiration period on this life as we know it, writes Rick Christian.

A True Truth!

Consequently, I am like a kid who is discovering one new thing after another.  I want to tell the kids – oh guess what happened to me today.

Well, one can’t get over the habit of being a little girl all at once…. ~Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea, 1909

But audience appreciation varies. So, I am glad I can still spot when their eyes are glazing over.

I never wanted to hear seasoned citizens’ discoveries either, when I was their age.

But how I would value a chinwag with any one of them!

An Imaginary Chinwag

I Get It!

Now, I know why my grandmother loved shawls, and why my mother-in-law usually put on the same earrings and necklaces most days. I understand why Doug’s father groaned when standing up or sitting down. Now, I get why everybody I remember who was the age I am now, declared, brass, not silver was a better metaphor for these years.

Most of them coped with their afflictions with grace, grit, and humor – especially when I would “share” my inexperienced opinion of how they should manage.

I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.  ~Bob Seger, “Against the Wind”

I can almost hear departed friends and family chuckling: She finally found out what that felt like!

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. ~Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

But, I learned one take-away, even if I can’t remember the specifics about how those silver saints coped: God never failed them. (Luke 1:37)

Whatever is around the bend in the next 24 hours, so is God, who is walking with me to meet it.

That’s the biggest discovery of aging I wish to pass along. Whatever my kids or grandkids, nieces, nephews or distant cousins think about me in this time of life, I hope they see that God makes all things beautiful in His time. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11)

Older women are like aging strudels – the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling has come at last into its own. Robert Farrar Capon