Time of Your Life Competition

In the year 2050 I will be over a hundred years old! If you could look into the face of this person way up there ahead you'd see the map of a whole long life that I'm calling
The Seven Ages of Woman

In me resides the small baby girl in handknits, the second girl child in the family of four noisy, and much loved children. Newness!

In me resides the shy child who heard her parents laugh, argue and tell stories, the same ones over and over, and the wonder of discovering she could write poetry about any of it, all of it! Discovery.

In me resides the young girl who laughed a lot with girlfriends and was terrified at the idea of boyfriends, who knew so much through reading but remembers vividly the precise moment of her first kiss, and the acute pain of her first betrayal. Experience.

In me resides the freedom of the student and first working years; new ideas and the enduring love affair with words; stories to read to kids, poems kept to herself, books shared with friends and lovers; ideas and dreams about the future. Power.

In me resides the young woman's passionate love for the man who became her husband; then later the blinding moments of panic, pain and bliss at the birth of their daughter and then their son; and the joy of another kind of birth, her first published book. Love

In me resides the knowledge of the untimely death of her husband and the realisation of life going on despite deep grief; and its relentless yet somehow comforting rhythm, moments of sharper understanding of how beautiful, how harsh, how varied the world; and in seeing her children grown up, knowing how precious a gift just being in it! Loss and Life.

And last of all with the going out, in me will reside the whole long ordinary and extraordinary life of a person who has graced the earth into old age. And the knowledge that (whether she is childish again or not!) shards of her life, maybe the high dramas, or just silly, funny, little events, maybe some endearing things, or just the memory of an old lined face, may remain with others whose life has been threaded through hers. Understanding

So, in 2050, at over 100 years, in me will reside the human story just as it resides in you, dear reader, at every age. But I believe the older you are, the richer, the more worked, the more amazing is your story. It has to be! Look into a lined face and see the map of a life, every person a receptacle of a story, their own unique story.

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