I Forgot to Get Old

I have always prided myself on having a good memory but suddenly I looked in the mirror and saw a woman with white hair.   Who was she?   She looked familiar, but was she someone I knew?  Internally, I am still this nubile creature anxiously awaiting another day, another adventure and every person a puzzle.   Did I have all the adventures?   Did I solve all the puzzles?  Did I have a memory lapse?   Did I move to another dimension?  When did I get older?   When did I grow up?   Am I really wiser and mellower?   I don’t think so. 

All the people I have known and met have seen my face and that is where I’ve been.   The reflection of how others perceived me is the image I have of myself.   There have been a variety of faces over the years but I seem to remember only the smiling, happy ones.  I must have an “erase mode” that wipes out all the negative images I received.

            I feel the same as I did, ten, twenty, thirty years ago – or I think I do.   There is always, not necessarily a fire in my belly, but certainly there are an abundant number of embers that with a little fanning begins to glow.   There is still the mischievous five years old, the sober twelve year old, and the earnest twenty-one and on it goes, but who is that woman I now see in the mirror.  I guess I will just have to get in touch with my “inner child” and tell it “You don’t have to act your age but try to be considerate of that woman in the mirror.   It could turn out to be you”.

The Bride Wore Black

“Why in the world would you want to be married in black?”  My mother asked me looking puzzled.  I did not reply.  My aunt was brought into the discussion.   She said, “It doesn’t have to be white, a lovely pastel would be nice.”   My mother again inquired, “You are only twenty, much too young to be wearing a black dress.”  I refused to change my mind.   Dramatically, I intoned, “I am going to my doom.”  

Wedding plans proceeded.   An army chaplain at Fort Mason was to perform the service.   My younger cousin was to be the best man.   I was marrying a soldier I had met at a dance when I was seventeen and had not seen again until ten days before.  The war in Europe had just ended and he had been liberated from two years in a prisoner of war camp.   His letter had been filled with words about our impending marriage and here he was waiting for me to make the ultimate commitment.   It seemed that I had no choice.  He had survived the war and had come home to claim his prize.   It was flattering and disconcerting.   Yet, here I was getting married.

I can still see my cousin, Joe winking at me through his thick glasses during the ceremony.   It reminded me of a fish staring out of a tank and I began to giggle.  The chaplain stopped the ceremony and gave me a stern look.   “Marriage is a serious step.”   He finished and the deed was done.   I was married to a man I didn’t know, leaving for a city I’d never seen and yet it seemed like the right thing to do.   I was entering into the unknown and my wish to wear black was part of the mystery.  

The stranger I had married remained an enigma the ten years we lived together.   No one commented on my dress.   Fate catapulted me into marriage a second time.   Destiny again took me by the hand and I followed.   I took no chances and wore a pastel dress.   One marriage in black had an unhappy ending.   I had learned my lesson.  The poet William Congreve said:  “Marry in haste, we may repent at leisure.”   But, Robert Browning wrote, “I am grown peaceful as old age tonight, I regret little, I would change still less.”