Brown Bubbles on Yellow Peel

It is OK to write about aging;

It is what happens and acutely known

Over the age of 55.

It is known known earlier—we wish for it, parade around in imagined suits and sun blanched foreheads when we are sixteen. We want it so much then, when it will take a third of our life to attain.

In the twenties we are consumed with the current, how we are and what we are and how we both reflect, drive, and flow with the cultures around us. We are strong and relish the falsities of independence.

In the thirties we are ambitious. We know where we can flex and expect the bands of our springs to catapult us higher. We don’t know what aging is because we have so much to do.

In our forties, we think on youth and, if we are lucky, forgive ambition and naïveté. We are ‘level’ and ‘smart’ and form merengue pyramids with us near the top.

It is in our fifties our vessel is unto ourselves, tangled to what we have through tendons tethered in place with sorrow and sweat. We summon: people who sing praises, even if the melodies do not linger. We touch, helpless in surrender to the comfortable. We stand, a mound with sites to the eighties.

That’s when aging become acute, sharp, a dagger both at mind and heart. We can and do strive. The sixties, the seventies, the eighties and nineties. But where are we in our fifties? How fragile is our skin? How pungent is our odour?

Dorian LaGuardia

April 2023