My kids have left for their anniversary celebration. 12 years, years of bumps and scratches, hatch plans, falls, lifts and a growing commitment. I hear it in their interactions, the way they share, the way they know each other, feel each other. 12 years, a beginning and a good one. It thinks me about beginnings because they come at us all the way through life. I hear conversations about perimenopause. Such a strange word and an even stranger beginning. I can hear that it feels like an ending which, I guess, it is, but it is also a beginning. To be free of all that monthly stuff, albeit eventually, sounds like a relief to me. I see skin smooth on beautiful faces, legs and arms and hear the whimper in the revelation of a few lines around the eyes. Later, in private, I see my own wrinkles, flipping tons of them, face, lips, arms and more, and I laugh. I have taught myself to see this aging process as a funny thing, because, let’s face it, it is funny. As gravity claims a body, and I speak as a woman who once was firm, who once could be certain that, with each step forward, the whole of her would land on the next. And that laughs me too, as I swither and caution myself, or is it ‘selfs,’ down hillsides, up high steps, across dips on the track. I am olding but I am not done yet, for there is beauty in this beginning, this olding, and the one who really needs to see that is me.

My eyebrows have all but disappeared. I used to colour them in, but just looked like a clown. It is impossible to get them both perfect. One is, the other looks like a starving caterpillar no matter what I do with my brush or pencil. And so, I stop. I know I have eyebrows and others who frankly give a damn will also know this and can probably see them, unlike me, even through bottle-glass specs. My face is still my face but now eyes are a bit sunk and my mouth is a thin line, no canvas for lipstick. And, I really don’t mind any of it, because here’s the thing. I am mobile, lithe, able and I have marbles aplenty. What is not to be grateful for? And that is my daily thankyou. I have what many don’t have, health, strength, determination, attitude, family, friends, community. I have my home, security, warmth, choices, laughter in my eyes and heart, a sense of fun, a love of people and moments. In all of these I forget completely how I look, whether or not I stumble or what mistakes I have made, the things I forgot, the way I tell the story again and to the same person.

I decide to be thankful and, more, to show, to live out daily gratitude for who I am, the life I have lived, the gains and the losses, the failures, successes and joys, the mistakes which learned me, the awful clothes I bought online and couldn’t send back because they came, way too late, from China, and so much more. When I live this way, very little phases me because none of it is about me, but only my attitude to it all. I may growl, I may, but the laugh comes in super quick. We have one life, that we know of. And every single day is a beginning.