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The Older Woman

The other night, while changing out of her work clothes, a woman looked in the mirror. Her hair was flattened against the side of her face. Her eye liner, slid from under her lids, resembled a raccoon. Her makeup had long faded, revealing deep creases around the edges of her eyes. The skin on her neck, like the eye liner, looked as though it had slid down her body, little rolls and folds where there used to be tight flesh. The veins on her skin popped up from her hands and feet, uncovering the wear and tear of time. Her naked body exposed years of use, of growing children, of nourishing children, of lifting children, of carrying children. Her breasts, her belly, her thighs and hips all rounder than they once were, all no longer able to fight gravity, their weight heavy on her frame. Her body had stretched and grown and given and been forgotten and neglected and loaned as a tool, as a vehicle, as a mechanism, as a means to an end and that end was giving light to others while she fell to the shadows. Her body had produced and provided, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, until time escaped her and she could no longer recount the minutes, nor the hours, nor the days and the years seemed to pass as quickly as the minutes. But, her body, the machine, counted the time like a clock and now, it represented the passing of all that time and there she was, for the first time in a long time, noticing that she was indeed old, or at least older. And she knew this to be true and she knew this body to be hers because it breathed and heaved and worked with her every day but at the same time, she could not believe this woman looking in the mirror was really her because this woman was old, or at least older, and she did not feel nearly as old as the image looking back at her.

Or did she? Because, when she thought about it, she was tired, like the kind of tired that's with you when you wake up in the morning and when you feel pain in your body when you roll over in the middle of the night and you think, "I am so tired of this pain." And she was wiser, like the kind of wise that knows what to do when a child has a fever in the middle of the night in the middle of a snowstorm, like the kind of wise that knows when battles are to be fought and when there are no battles to be had. And she was softer, like the kind of soft that soothes crying kids and forgives and forgets and judges less because life is too short to hold a grudge.

The woman had been changing all along, and that change changes you inside and out and change is good but you can't fight gravity, unless you wear a push up bra and Spanx and even those are just hiding the inevitable.

Come to think about it, the woman realized, as she stared at her reflection, she was that old woman, or at least an older woman, and she smiled back at her reflection because she liked what she saw.

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