On little cat feet
It sneaks up on you when you least expect it. It doesn’t happen suddenly, but it’s still a surprise. You look in the mirror one morning and you see it. You see a person who you never thought you’d be. You have lines around your mouth. Your neck is what is known as “crepe” and if you’re honest, you back is not nearly as strong as it once was.
When I was eleven, I wanted to be thirteen. I wanted to wear lipstick like my sister. Mom used to say you could see my sister coming three streets down by the red of her lips. She was fourteen and really liked red lipstick. Mom said we could wear lipstick when we were thirteen. That seemed fair back in those days.
We could also wear high heels, no not as high as I wore later, but higher than little Mary Janes. And we could wear stockings. First off, back in those days there was no such thing as panty hose. We had a contraption called a garter belt that attached to hose. It wasn’t all that comfortable and those little thingies that attached to the hose dug into your legs when you sat down.
Moving right along, I was glad when I turned fifteen. Fifteen was officially the birthday when I could start dating. My boyfriend at the time was looking forward to taking me to the movies. His mother drove. I was on crutches because of a knee injury and my leg was in a full cast. It was hard to get comfortable in theater seats. Poor Alan’s leg fell asleep because mine was wedged in next to his. He sort of collapsed a bit.
By the time I was sixteen, I was not necessarily looking forward to getting my driver’s license since a friend had a red Oldsmobile 442 convertible she got for her sixteenth birthday.
I didn’t need a car. I was looking forward to turning eighteen, graduating from high school, and moving on to college. There was never any doubt that I would go to college even though an aunt of mine thought that was such a waste of time. Girls should get married and have kids, not get an education. I told her I didn’t want to get married so young or have kids so young. I didn’t.
I probably had more fun in college than I should have. I went to a small private college, religious in nature, but I was never that religious. It didn’t matter. I made lifelong friends, performed in plays, and actually passed Zoology,
Botany, and college level biology with very little study. Studying was against my religion! I’m only kidding. It’s just that I was interested in literature, writing, drama and performance. Everything else was just necessary to graduate from a liberal arts college. Thinking back, I should have gone to a school of performing arts, but I went to the school my parents wanted me to attend. And, you know what? It was just fine.
When I was in my twenties, I met the love of my life, which was a total surprise. He was adorable, though, with dark hair and eyes and when I first met him, my tongue kind of stuck to the roof of my mouth. Our first date was at the old Underground Atlanta. He ordered me this fruity drink and I liked it. He warned me not to drink it with a straw. He was right. He did tell me he liked my hair. It was 1970 and my hair was long and blond. I thanked him and told him it glowed in the dark. I did not mean to say that. He just laughed.
My late twenties and early thirties were spent having four children and bringing them up to be decent human beings. All four graduated from college, three from UGA and one from Georgia State University.
They are all good and successful people and presented us with six grandchildren in all. Grandchildren, I have decided, are extensions of Bill’s and my souls. I see myself in some and my Bill and my mother and father and my mother-inlaw in others. So, I look in the mirror and I’m a bit jolted. Who is this woman staring back at me?
What happened to my hair that glowed in the dark? What happened to the young girl who had the world by the tail in her twenties? She had a career in education and retired. She aged.
It crept up on her like the fog Carl Sandburg wrote about on little cat feet. I can’t do a lot of things I used to do. It’s disconcerting, but I’m here and ready to step into whatever is next in my life.
I hope it treads softly and a little slower.