A Vision

 Yesterday was Valentine’s Day.  There was a big red box of fancy Italian chocolates tied with a gold bow on my table with a lovely Valentine from my sweetie.  It was a nice way to start my day.  Then, Arne and Liam came over for a visit, to work in the shop, to hang out and play card games and to have lunch with us.  It was blessed time of seeming normality interrupted only by the necessity of us all wearing masks.  How good it was to have them here for the afternoon.  

While all the guys were in the shop doing their guy work,  I worked in my garden, pruning Salvias and pulling out the omnipresent Oxalis.  Carrying up the full blue garden bin to the green waste can in the driveway, I had a vision of myself.  Suddenly, as if I was hit by a bolt of lightning, I saw myself as I expect others see me—-as a thin white haired old woman.  It was a shock.   In my mind, I’m not like that.  I have in me a constant inner thread of who I am that hasn’t changed that much over the years.  Oh, I hope I’m a bit wiser now, more patient and calmer.  But I feel the same in this inner picture as I did years ago, when Bob and I were first married and hiked so much or when I was teaching and carpooling the boys all over to their various activities.  There is a constancy in me of who I think I am.   I feel like the essence of me has remained the same through the many experiences I’ve had and over the years I’ve been alive.  Yet when I look in the mirror or catch of glimpse of this older me in photos, I see my body has changed.  I see myself as my grandmother.  Someone who finds it hard to put a big lunch on the table for company because she doesn’t do it very often.  Someone who now gets nervous riding in the car on the freeway.  Someone who lies down in the afternoon to read and falls asleep.  There are two me’s.  I think both are true.  But it’s definitely a puzzle.