Age and Arrogance

All these years, I believed that I was turning into my mother; age spot by age spot, hair a bit thinner, waist a bit wider, even the delicate drop of the fragile flesh along the of jowl line. Then last weekend at the annual family reunion at the Field and Stream Club, I saw my father's sisters and saw my future - at least a portion of the portrait.

Years ago, in my arrogance of indestructible youth, I felt elevated, superior, to see their hair graying, the skin growing delicate as tissue, their female shapes losing their waistlines. In my heart of darkness, I chortled with glee to see the four sisters deposited in the rocking chairs on the porch of the clubhouse while in what I thought to be my superior youth, I ventured down the slope to explore the river, to run with the children, to demonstrate my superior vitality, strength, and spirit.

I berated their outdated fashion; the hairstyle that had not been updated since 1950, the sensible shoes, the fabric that stretches. Their stories were too long, mundane, and too long ago for me to bother. Not to mention my father who carries on and on and on and on -- fathering seven children, going from modest Riveria Beach rancher to Taneytown farm, battling his demons and his disease and not succumbing.

Superior vitality, strength and spirit; I've had role models in my life. I thought I only had my mother and she is still the pinnacle as far as I am concerned. But it is easy to be strong and superior in youth and even in mid-life; the descent of the slope requires the firmest of conviction, Herculean tenacity, and an ego like silly putty that contracts and expands with the every day surprise in the mirror.