"How old are you Grandma?"

My Grands ask, "How old are you Grandma?" (No doubt, I seem ancient.)
I reply, "I don't really know but I must be a hundred and fifty or maybe even two hundred." They nod in agreement.

I have a birthday coming up. I look in the mirror and down at these wrinkled hands typing:  yes, seasons have passed so I must be "old". Yet, the sense, feel and image I have of myself is essentially and shockingly timeless -- love doesn't get mil-dewy, wisdom keeps flowing, be it uphill at times and this lake and I are in relationship.

Being a day younger, would not hold today's passion and these I wouldn't miss.The ideas that filtered through my mind yesterday wouldn't have a chance ten years ago or even three days ago. Swimming this morning, I chatted with four ducks, not two feet from me, coming out of the morning mist trailing their rippled V's  past my shoulders. Would I have even been aware of our energetic connected-ness a few years ago? Just walking by the piano, I feel excitement. My fingers want to dance those 88's. Four years ago, I felt nothing but avoidance. Being younger again, even by a day, holds little appeal.

In spirit there is no age. In fact, I am in a spirit growth-spurt right now and love it. I am not my wrinkles anymore than a pregnant woman is her stretched marks. There is no physical organ called person-hood, nor one called joy, sadness, love, excitement, enthusiasm or grief.  They just can't be found. Yet they are who I am -- not the body but the spirit. Thinking of myself as a face, grey hair or a hand is not realistic. They could be ash tomorrow.

I have discovered a secret, the most wonderful secret. I am not my body. My mother was near bent to the side walk when she made her transition in her nineties. Yet, courage, integrity and a back bone of steel belied that image. I must not let my eyes fool me. They can so easily. Yet I have another far more important form -- Me, We, Us and Oneness.

Age is only one part of the weave as my aliveness waits daily to be played with a fresh heart and new eyes. However, I need to be careful and source from the natural self -- from inside out rather than outside in. The deeper level begs the question, "Has the grace and beauty of aging been lost in this consensus reality that only sees bodies?" And unfortunately, I too, have looked to the wise and only seen obsolesce. Yet, I feel like the ninety-year-old taxi driver who in his wisdom stated to the younger man in the back seat, "Listen to me, I know a lot."

Yes, I have a birthday coming up. What is this life force inside that has nothing to do with my skin, the color of my eyes or my heart rate? I am not my "aches and pains", in fact they are not even mine: they are this body's I've been given to walk around in, to love with, to experience this exquisite aliveness that moves the wind on the water or swirls the cloud in a flawless sky.

This age I am entering in a few days will be a great new house to build and live in.  A billion things have been missed, yet a billion timeless things wait to be experienced before I pass into the invisible.


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