Since my printer and scanner are cooperating with my computer again, I've been going through pictures. I came across two pictures, that when compared, make me feel very old. The first was an old timey sepia tone picture taken on our honeymoon in 1978. I was as innocent as the day was long at one month shy of my 20th birthday (Gosh, what a baby I was!!!) Although I don't really like this picture of me, I'm struck by how filled out my face was (it's called youth!). What I wouldn't give to have that natural collagen back in some places! When we were in Tennessee this summer for our daughter's wedding we had a similar picture taken. That young girl is no longer evident in my face at all. Twenty seven years! Twenty seven years is written all over my face. I know that today's woman is supposed to embrace her age and that the lines on our faces are supposed to be worn as proudly as a gold medal. I'm sorry, I try, I honestly do, but I just can't get there. I want that young face back. I want that innocence back. I want the chance to redo a few things. I think I'd be braver, smarter, more independent given the chance to do it again. Maybe not, but I would hope that I would.
It's a moot point though, isn't it? I can't have those twenty seven years back. I can never be that face again. That girl again. There is a lot of that girl left inside of me. I've changed my view on a lot of things since then. I've tried on different ideas and kept some of them, I've gone back to some old ideas after trying to wrap my mind around some new ways of thinking about things. I've learned, I've grown. I've succeeded, I've failed, I've loved and lost, laughed and cried, hurt and been hurt. In short, I've lived my life. Twenty seven years of it. But I can still remember what that young girl in this picture was thinking. I know what her hopes and dreams were. I know what her greatest fears were. She's experienced a bit of both. She's reached out, she's retreated. She has tried her best to be the person she wanted to be on the day this picture was taken. She thought, I think, that she would always be this young, this innocent. Twenty seven years for her then might as well have been 227, so near-sighted was she. She had no way of knowing that it would go by at the speed of light. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our future self could talk to our present self. I've imagined what I would say to that girl. Not that it would have mattered. I know that girl, she wouldn't have heard a word.
Tomorrow....that girl, that face, 27 years older and maybe just a tad bit wiser, or not.
2 comments:
Joni Mitchell sang it best
we're captives on the carasel of time
we can't return
we can only look behind
from where we came
and go round and round and round\in the circle game." (the Circle game)
I am certain you are more lovely today than ever! Marc :)
It's so fun to look back at ourselves and think along the lines of what we would say to our younger selves...
I'll bet that the face will be just as pretty now as then.
Jimmy
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