eye dimples

The other night, a bunch of us were sitting around the dining room table playing a game of Balderdash. One of the "moms" made a comment about having so many wrinkles around her eyes.   She was using it as a metaphor for stress and life's unrelenting complications that tend to leave life acquired scars and wrinkles.  She has them, but it was a metaphor!   My son replied to her......... "They aren't wrinkles.... They are eye dimples."  We laughed. 

Yeah, I used to have these cute dimples in the middle of my cheeks.  Somehow while the rest of me began to sag downward, the dimples tiptoed up to the corners of my green eyes and began smiling from there.  Isn't it funny how we can manage to get our head around the beauty of aging if we just alter our perspective on it?  Dimples are considered youthfully cute.  Wrinkles are considered lines of weary.  Strange how our perceptions shift by using one label over another.

I was asked yesterday by a friend how I felt about being the age I am right now, on the cusp of turning 50.  The vanity coupled with the little fear I have that bites me when I'm all alone at night caught in a flurry of misguided thoughts while laying in bed wide awake doesn't like it one bit.  However, the majority of the time?  I'm liking it all.  This is my prime even if my eyes disappear into a squint when I smile now.  Inside, my youthfulness has discovered the strength and convictions acquired through experience and has blended its own curiosity and flirtations to form me.  The older I get, the more comfortable I am in my own skin.  There's a saying that middle age is when your old enough to know better but young enough to still do it.  With panache!  Love panache!

How about you?  

Are you comfortable in your own skin? 

Do you like who you are, and who you are becoming? 

If not, why not?  How can you become happier with yourself?

If so, why so?  Where did this comfort come from?

Do you see the wrinkles around your eyes as a frightening symbol of aging, or as a smiling set of eye dimples?

Certainly this is a period in my life when I find myself in the midst of transition.  Its a natural place to be.  Spiritually, emotionally, sexually I am in my prime.  Physically, I'm lagging behind along with my saggy-ness...gravity does that.  There are times when I look in the mirror or at a photo of myself and I'm shocked by the reality that my looks are not the same as they were in my mid 20's. 

Where did the time go?  It went into living.  It went into loving, producing, learning, stretching, growing, experiencing, yearning, struggling, connecting, weeping, laughing, caring, giving and receiving, healing, helping.  It went into planting, reaping, settling, mourning, celebrating.  It went into watching, listening, talking, dancing, cooking, travelling, embracing, praying, harvesting, teaching, counseling, mothering, partnering.  It went into living through many seasons.....with as much fullness as I could.

All purposeful.

All meaningful.

All seasonal.

All reasonal.

Even developing eye dimples.  

The better to smile at you with my dear.