Ode to the older now

My eyes open - not as wide as they used to but I see so much farther now.

I sit up - not like a coiled spring anymore but I relish the rising more now.

Now. Now is so much different than before.

Now is before and soon all wrapped up into one .. time moves in circles. I feel like I’ve stopped living in a straight line.

Or maybe it was always so and I was moving too fast to notice.

The forest outside my window looks like I feel. Old growth tangled with new. The top leafless branches reaching for the pale blue Winter sky. The fallen on the forest floor rotting beneath the snow. Roots run deep and strong in the icy ground and connect it all, beneath where it’s hard to see.

I stand and stretch - my muscles complain more than they ever did but I give them grace, they deserve it.

I am heavy now. Heavy in my belly where my three sons grew. I’m much the same shape as when I carried them but now the space they occupied is filled with memories of wine and bread and pot and pain and people who stole parts of me that I had to replace.

And so this woman, this combobulation of the pieces left of a life lived just a little too close to the edge, rises and ages a little more. Aging into a period where past and present and future are as important as the other. Where answers aren’t as hard to find but fear and ambition and folly find hard ground.

This is a place where wisdom thrives. Where being alone feels like good and right .. where my brain no longer releases the chemicals that tell me to put myself aside and others first .. where I am worthy and valuable without paying a bill or washing a dish to prove it. Where I do what I do. And people can think what they think.

This is aging well. Now.