Aging, being kinder to myself...

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life,

my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly.

As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself.

I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie,

or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need,

but looks so avante garde on my patio.

I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.
I have seen too many loved ones die too soon;
Whose business is it if I choose to read or  I will dive into the ocean waves with abandon  
I know I am sometimes forgetful, too soon, I feel like my grandfather, forgetting my car keys, my parked car, the name of a long ago favorite movie star.
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken, over lost loves, family tragedies, and sadly over the loss of my children.  
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turned gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face.

So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. Their faces still haunt me, old friends gone, I still pick up the phone, dial tone humming in my ear before I realize, ...gone.  

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think, it is irrelevant, they have not lived my life, paid my bills, lived my tragedies, joys, raised my children.

before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.

play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon?

I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes

of the 60 &70's, and if I, at the same time,

wish to weep over a lost love ..... I will.

if I choose to, despite pitying glances from the jet set.

They, too, will get old. ( At 14, will passing through a nearby Civil War grave yard, I spotted a stone with the engraving, "Young man take notice as you walk by, as you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you will be, prepare for death and follow me."

But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten, there are SOME benefits to amnesia.

And I eventually remember the important things.

How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, a family, something or someone over whom you have struggled so valiantly, for so long? or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car?

But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. God does give us only what we can handle.

　A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect. By that measure, this writer is as imperfect as one can get.

  

I don't question myself anymore. I've earned the right to be wrong.

Someone once asked, "So you think YOU'RE perfect?" Oh, no, we don't have the time between now and the second coming to list all my mistakes, but I never made ONE with the intention of hurting anyone. Ever. And, as writer Pete Hamill once told me, I hope never to make them again.

 I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I am now. I am not going to live forever, thank God, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be.
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And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it).