Reflections on Aging

With Yella going off to her 40th high school reunion, I have been thinking about the span of time.

I punched up a Facebook picture of one of Yella's friends from the old days in KCMO. I remember what she looked like back then. When I saw her picture now, I was stunned.

She is so OLD!!!

She was a spacey hippy chick, with long, straight blond hair, tall and slender. Not any more. She has a round, doughy face with dark brown hair (who knows what her natural color is). There is mature presence in her eyes, no doe eyed hippy chick left.

I feel like it was just yesterday that I knew her. And now, a life time has gone by...can you get it...a life time!

Wow, where did it all go?

I can think back to the years and decades from the 60's on with vivid recall. When I think about it, the time is there...full and real and substantial. Every upset and victory for our children. All the phases that Yella and I went through. And on and on...

But...when I think about it in the same moment, it is a twinkle in time. Insubstantial, whimsical, brief...so, so brief.

Shit, where did it all go?

And I still feel young. I remember my father telling me when he was about 75, that he felt young inside even though he was old outside.

I still feel young too. I think of my life with a future to be lived yet.

Then I look in the mirror and I see...my father. How the hell did he get in my mirror!

Uh oh. I better read a book or watch a good movie to snap this crazy thinking.