Last night I spoke with a friend about how someone’s wife started following my writing after he followed me for several years, and I was hoping that she wasn’t concerned her husband had feelings for me, because I wanted to know them both.
And he said, honey, you aren’t young anymore, it’s unlikely.
They are both older than me, I said..
Even more reason it’s not likely.
HIs dismissal felt like all the nights we went on night walks and he rolled his eyes at the moon.
Today I had to check in with myself, whether this man was activating a wound in me about aging. I’m just so happy to be alive, most days I don’t even understand why I am still alive,…. I’m filled with so much gratitude I haven’t had to keep up the tango with death – she has give me a break, finally, so every day is so sweet.
When I look in the mirror I see my mother’s face, my father’s, my grandmother’s and my granddaughter’s face. But I also always see me, a compilation of all that came before me, and all that will come after me.
Being my age is astonishingly wonderful. I hope all the young people I know can witness more older men and women loving where they are in their journeys.
Attraction has absolutely nothing to do with age, though I have never been attracted to a younger man, I know I could be. I’ve never been in love with a horse, but recently I fell in love with one. Full-on, head over heels in love.
Last week, a female friend looking for a male partner found a man flirting with her, but she didn’t like some things about his appearance – his thinning hair, his teeth, though she liked his personality. She was listing all the reasons why not, which were all superficial, had nothing to do with his soul.
There is often so much noise in our lives in what we think we want, we forget to see the whole person. We are looking at the body a soul is inside, the shell of a person. To get stuck on imperfections means we may miss an opportunity to truly connect with another soul.
Conversely, we can lay beside the most most physically beautiful person in the world, and if our souls aren’t connecting, the experience is empty.
I’m not denying biology or attraction, or how women shine when they are ovulating…. but all my life, I have fallen in love with souls. And when I meet a new soul I love, which is almost weekly, I’ve had friends ask, what does she look like? What does he look like?
And I swear to God, I can rarely pull the details up in my mind even though I’m a writer. All I can see is the shining, the skipping, the musical notes of them, their soul dance in their bodies. The whole of their story, their light and their shadows.
I’m an imperfect, aging older woman. I still wear hoop earrings and leggings and boots. I dance and swim and bike up steep hills in third gear. I fall in love with people of all genders and some horses with one blue eye and one brown eye.
And sometimes people and babies and animals and trees fall in love with me, too, when I least expect it, wrapping their roots and their limbs around me.
Yes, we are souls having an experience in human bodies, connected by an intricate, endless web of love.
Our souls are the only thing we get to take with us, regardless of our bank accounts or our outward beauty.. Our soul is the lighthouse on the cliff, the porch light in the fog, sometimes the small, injured bird we hold in the palm of our hand that fell out of the nest.
Today I am saying a prayer for my friends who have forgotten how to see through to the soul, that they find their way home, that they appreciate the young and the aging souls beside them, wether they are twenty pounds overweight, thinning hair or shaking hands.
And may we also remember to look not just inward, but also upward, because even when we can’t see the stars, we know they are there.
And last – may we never, ever roll our eyes at the moon. Instead, let’s put on hoop earrings and dance in her light.