Life Is Short

The most amazing thing about aging is that unless we look in the mirror, we don't realize we've aged! In our heads we are 18, 22, 24...whatever the age we are in the picture in our head. Then one day we walk past a mirror and glance over. Who is that old woman in the mirror? The revelation that is me, is extraordinary.

How can this be? How did I get to look like this? It might not be a bad look, we may have aged well, but we have aged nontheless. It happens in a flash, in a blink of an eye. That's why I say, all the time, DON'T BLINK! But we do anyway.

I can remember with vivid clarity, my girlfriend Renee and I. We were 20 years old and each had an infant. She a girl, me a boy. We were sitting around the table in my Mothers kitchen. I can close my eyes and see us there. Renee said, "do you realize 10 years ago we were 10, 10 years from now we will be 30".

Little did I know how profound those words were...those 10 years flew by and the next 10 and the next and so on. Here we are, Renee is going to receive her 1st Social Security Check. That's the good news! The bad news...I'll be getting my 1st check in July.

So, once again I ask "how did I get here"? Will somebody please slow this world down or as was so succinctly said many years ago in a Broadway musical "Stop the world, I want to get off". I don't want to get off, I just want it to slow down.

Life is like a "bowl of cherries", we just have to remember to stop long enough to eat a few and then some more. We have to savor more of each day, pick our friends with care and love each other more. Other than that, I guess we still have to grow old or not grow at all...just don't ask me to GROW UP!

Neelie