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less wrinkles. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

“if i’m laden at all/i’m laden with sadness that everyone’s heart isn’t filled with the gladness of love for one another.” (he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother – bob russell/bobby scott)

when i look in the mirror these days i am struck by the lines around my eyes, the lines etched above my lips, the furrow etched into my brow. i wonder how they all arrived without my noticing, as if – at night, while i was sleeping – a clay sculpting tool had gently drawn lines in skin no longer as resilient as it had been.

i glance at photographs from merely five years ago – and then ten years ago – and am startled to see the difference. but i know what the last years have been and – so – i should not be surprised. these wrinkles have been earned.

for it has been a time.

we all have them – these timelines of challenge or disappointment or frustration or grief.

in the humanness we all share, it would seem prudent to share these heavy burdens, the stuff of life that is made easier with someone else to help lift them.

“so on we go/his welfare is my concern/no burden is he to bear, we’ll get there.”

but this last decade.

as is woven throughout the history of this country, the extraordinary of abject cruelty and its ugly head raise up and shock our belief in equality and kindness. this last decade.

the hypocrisy of institutions supposedly dedicated to the love of one another – to goodness – to compassion – shifts the ground under our feet and we have been gobsmacked by the betrayal. this last decade.

our very own communities have quaked, stormy, seismic shifts forming a crevasse between us – not merely a difference in opinion, but a difference in basic morality. we reel from the impact, from the air that is sucked from our lungs as we grok this. this last decade.

last week. my birthday. d’s homemade card next to my early morning coffee. the pink tulips from 20. dogga’s momma-kisses. the call from my girl and her husband. and that moment my son handed me a tiny carrot cake – remembering. i felt the light, the easing of the load, the gladness, the love. each time.

i do not understand the dedication to cruelty, to evil intention, to undermining others, to destruction, to the bandwagon of every-man-for-himself-every-woman-for-herself.

“it’s a long, long road from which there is no return/while we’re on the way to there why not share?”

i wonder how it might all be different.

i suspect there’d be far fewer furrows and creases and wrinkles.

“and the load doesn’t weigh me down at all. he ain’t heavy. he’s my brother.”

*****

NURTURE ME © 1995 kerri sherwood

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nooks and crannies. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

i don’t usually eat thomas’ english muffins these days – the “real” ones are not gluten-free and i have been pretty much sticking to a gluten-free diet. but lately, i’ve been trying a little gluten here, a little gluten there, just to see if i can push the envelope a little. plus, “real” english muffins are one of my favorite things and eating them seems a tad bit happily indulgent.

so the other day – when david was talking about his weathered face, the wrinkles, the aged-ness – it just seemed like the highest complimentary comeback to tell him they – his wrinkly wrinkles – are simply nooks and crannies…just like my favored english muffins.

i’m not sure he was pleased with the comparison, but i love his face even more than i love english muffins, so it was meant with a whole world of reassurance.

we are what we are – wrinkles and all – and we need to celebrate THAT extraordinariness.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

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marvel. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

i wonder if the tree looked in the mirror and counted rings, pondering the impetus behind each one, the reasons for the wrinkles of years, ever-forming, ever-widening. it is doubtful that the tree gazed, searching the rearview mirror for clues, connective tissue, remembrances of angst or sublime moments. it seems more likely that the tree just accepted each concentric ring, the truth of time. it seems more likely that the tree recognized the steady strength it gained for each ring, the rootedness each ring-wrinkle brought to it.

it would seem that this could be a good lesson from nature for us. the natural, raw, untouched passing of time shown on our faces, each beautiful in aging. we could acknowledge the years and the easy and the hardships. we could bow to the accumulation of moments, time flying by as we gather minutes in our embrace. we could turn toward each other, accepting and without judgment, full of grace and care, measuring only our love for each other, unbiased by wrinkles or rings, color or patina. we could tenderly touch the faces of our beloveds and marvel.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY


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older-agers. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

in junior high i wrote a piece which i titled “old age is not a disease”. i was the child of older parents; most of my friends’ parents were at least ten years younger than mine, some fifteen. many of my parent’s friends were also their age and my grandparents were significantly older, so i was surrounded by elders.

i’m not quite sure what compelled me to write this piece, but it was written with fervor and i was passionate about my assertion. though i’m certain it’s somewhere in a bin downstairs, i’ll rely on my tenuous memory when i say i backed it up with facts and a great deal of emotion. always thready and emotional. from the beginning, i suspect.

so i guess it should come as no surprise that i am drawn to things waning. i find the flower on trail past its prime, bowing to the forest floor, petals wrinkling. i find the fallen tree, nurselog to a little community of new trees, striving. i find the dried grasses, glowing in late autumn. my photo library is full of these older-agers.

i keep the daisies until it no longer makes sense. but it seems that is way past when others would keep them. their curling petals no longer crisply open, instead shrinking and closing. they are beautiful. all stages.

daisies are kind of important to us. i was holding a daisy when i met david in baggage claim nine years ago. the second time i met him with a whole armful of daisies. and then, daisies walked with us down the aisle. i suspect they will be with us all along.

so, like us, i recognize their allure in every stage. even in waning.

this past weekend the father of my beloved children, my first husband, turned 65. i wished him a happy birthday and texted that i was astonished that we are the ages we are.

the time between back then and now has flown by and, were i to be defined as a daisy, i am grateful the petals and that yellow center of joy are still present, though a little crumply and a spectrum of many flaxen shades.

i know i don’t look like the daisy of yore. but every stage of a daisy counts.

“may the light of your soul mind you,

may all your worry and anxiousness about becoming old be transfigured,

may you be given a wisdom with the eye of your soul, to see this beautiful time of harvesting.

may you have the commitment to harvest your life, to heal what has hurt you, to allow it to come closer to you and become one with you.

may you have great dignity, may you have a sense of how free you are,

and above all may you be given the wonderful gift of meeting the eternal light and beauty that is within you.

may you be blessed, and may you find a wonderful love in yourself for yourself.”

(john o’donohue – “a blessing for old age” from anam cara)

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY


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frankie’s wisdom. [saturday morning smack-dab.]

there was an emphasis on beauty long before mass media made natural aging formidable. women and men, but especially women, went to lengths to be beautiful, taking great pains to conform to whatever was the current measure of beauty.

but in the past century – later 1900s through now – there has been a shift to devaluing the aging process, to undercutting the beauty of what aged looks like. the look of youth is prized disproportionately and has made middle age look inadequate. we are under siege and it is increasingly impossible to measure up to those decades younger.

there is no good reason any woman of any age should be feeling that beautiful is not unconditionally hers, is not inherently attainable. there is no good reason any young woman, glowing with new maturity, should be feeling beauty-challenged. there is no good reason any woman on the menopause roller coaster should be feeling that beautiful is bygone. there was no good reason my sweet momma, at 93, should look in the mirror and sorrowfully cry, “i look like an old woman!”. on the contrary.

the confidence, just like the wrinkles, has been earned over a lifetime of living, over struggling to be healthy, to be engaged, to learn, to be active. there is no measure for the wisdom gleaned and the story each of those wrinkles might tell, the love and struggle and perseverance each grey hair might represent, the days in the sun playing with children and grandchildren reflected in crepey skin and the lines next to her eyes from laughter with her friends.

just like hallmark aggressively pushing made-up holidays or the internet naming days as “national – whatever – day” compelling us to be involved, mass media on all levels, in all arenas, has foisted “youthful appearance” upon us as the measure of value, of validation, of relevance.

the cultural preoccupation fighting the intrinsic processes of aging is surely a mark of ignorance, of superficiality, of contrived campaigns for products and images from which we should gracefully walk away. transformative surgeries and injectibles and laser work are on a stunning rise. for what?

surely in this society we are not as inept as it seems at helping others, particularly women, to develop self-esteem, positive body image, confidence.

surely our preoccupation should be on frank lloyd wright’s words, “the older i get, the more beautiful life becomes.”

my daughter – naturally amazing and naturally beautiful and naturally talented was not even twenty when she chose those words – in french – as her first tattoo. ink as a reminder. words of wisdom.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING SMACK-DAB.

SMACK-DAB. ©️ 2021 kerrianddavid.com


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the piñata. [saturday morning smack-dab.]

middle age is called that because it is the middle of aging. with that comes a bundle of surprises that seem to arrive overnight. suddenly, new wrinkles. suddenly, crepey skin. suddenly, age spots and creeping-on lovehandles. suddenly, menopausal insomnia, achier joints, keeping track of rest areas on the way to everywhere. suddenly, jowls. it’s like a piñata that is slowly letting out candy, treats to relish with this person you are aging with.

we have decided that we simply cannot pine for what our bodies were like or could do back before we knew each other. now is now and we are lucky to have that. and so, we will celebrate the laughlines and the readers and changing bodies and funny long errant eyebrows. we’ll roll with the surprises as they arrive, with gratitude, laughing as much as we can, and we’ll stay right here in the middle of this aging thing – together.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING SMACK-DAB.

SMACK-DAB. ©️ 2021 kerrianddavid.com


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my dad’s jowls. [d.r. thursday]

over-exposed and blurry. that’s how i prefer photographs of me these days.

this morning i opened facebook and there was one of those “you have a memory” pictures. it was from nine years ago when my girl graduated from college and she and i and one of my nieces were all in a pub gathered closely together. adding to my over-exposed and soft-focus-photo-capture-desires, this memory looked different – younger – than when i looked in the mirror shortly thereafter. hmm. the marks of time.

my sweet momma would look in the mirror and, in a singsong whiny voice whine, “i look like an old woman!” she was 93. i would gently remind her both that she was a woman of age and she was amazingly beautiful wearing that age. but as i look into the mirror each day, i’m wondering if she was as dismissive of my words as i am dismissive of david’s “you’re beautiful” compliments. we are so hard on ourselves. our grooves, impressions like the ones in the carpet at the old family home, are earned from the long haul, from all that we have encountered, from the sun in day and dreams at night.

the wear and tear – or lack thereof – on each of us belies the courage and tenacity beneath the surface. we keep on keeping on, adding a wrinkle here or a grey hair there. i thought i was getting used to the appearance of tiny evidences of middle-aging until one famous morning. it all had gone basically unnoticed until that one day when i looked in the mirror and WHAMMO! my dad’s jowls had appeared. what?!? i stared at myself. my dad’s jowls stared back. it was all i could see. what on earth had happened overnight??

i ran to the next room to get a photograph of my sweet poppo and, sure enough, there they were. a perfect match. i pulled up a recent photo of my dad’s sister, his only surviving sibling, and voila! there they were. i am in a perfect-harmony-trio of jowls. i looked for a picture of my sister. though i was hoping to, i didn’t really see any jowls. what’s up with that, dna? seems slightly unfair to me. ahh, indents and jowls. the marks of time.

i look sideways to the window as i write this. below the sill are a variety of lines in the wall, many of them. on summer nights, when the window was wide open and you could feel the breeze blowing and the sweet smell of mown grass drifted in, this was the window that babycat jumped into to sleep. his lumbering body stretched out on the sill, he would lay there throughout the night. in the morning, he would put his paw down in front of his body and drag it along the wall to carefully get down out of the window. the scratched lines remain. indented in the wall, i am not eager to remove them in these times of dearly missing our beloved cat.

one day, like the vacuum that will remove the ridged lines in the carpet in david’s parents’ living room, a little sanding and paint will remove these scratched lines. but their import won’t go away. the sofa that sat in the living room may no longer be there, but the times spent there will always be a part of that space. the scratches on the wall may be fixed, but the cat that graced our lives will always be a part of this space.

the jowls that are now on my face will remain, however, and i suspect become more pronounced, just like the wrinkles and the grey hairs. all that i have been – including the times when i didn’t care about over-exposure and blurred photos – will remain. all that i have experienced, just like you, makes its mark. and we will be lucky if we someday glance in a mirror at 93 and whine-like-we’re-45, “i look like an old woman!”

jowls or not.

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“live life, my sweet potato”

“butts are in!” she said, as i walked out of the fitting room and pirouetted in front of the three-way mirror, studying my reflection and the new jeans i had tried on. “good thing,” i said, off on a rant, bemoaning menopause catching up to me. sitting on one of those man-benches outside the fitting room, david laughed and rolled his eyes. buying jeans is one of the worst undertakings for a girl, i told him. it just isn’t easy. nothing about it is easy. no matter what age you are. there is so much to think about, so much to worry about. david said it seems much more complicated than “boysbuyingjeans.” ha! the understatement of the century, eh?

momma looked at me many times, straight in the eye, and worriedly said, “i looked in the mirror today and i was shocked to seephoto-1 an old woman! i look like an old woman!” goodness gracious, momma, you were 93! momma had every single right to look like an old woman. matter of fact, she was the most beautiful old woman i have ever seen. all those amazing wrinkles she earned through life, those eyes that have seen so much, the laugh lines around her mouth, the easy smile, that look that could stop all motion, the little scars- the one she got from playing field hockey, the one she got from a golf outing. beautiful. beautiful. beautiful.

recently scordskiii wrote to me that he is “always slightly baffled by the extreme nip/tuck stuff going on with 50-something women.” the pressure of looking “good”, the worry of not looking “old”. he continued, “there is something to be said for growing old gracefully…hell, it’s a gift when growing old is an option…bring on the wrinkles!”

every time we walk past linda’s house she stops us and cuts flowers for us, sending us home with armfuls of stunning blooms. we protest, saying that she is cutting too many, that she should save them for herself or not cut them. she always shoos away our protest, hugs us and sends us on our way. they are there to cut, she says. to be enjoyed. she is not worried about what she has cut or what she has left in her flower garden. she is embracing the beauty of the flowers she can share. we are grateful. for the flowers and the hugs. she doesn’t worry about the wrinkles it leaves in her garden.

photo-3the other night we sat on the edge of the deck. it was twilight. the air was still. little sun was left in the sky. we could hear the birds readying for the night. in the distance we could hear the foghorn. we held hands. and sat. quietly. then we let dogdog out. he ran rampant around the backyard, his joyful smile leading the way through the hostas. at first i cringed, thinking about all the hours this backyard has taken and how quickly his aussie body can make it look – well – pretty wrinkled. but what would life be like without his exuberance? what would it be like perfectly perfect? the trade-off would be huge…like botox for life, not just cosmetic. shaving off the highs and lows, the spectrum would narrow, maybe even to a point of comfortable predictability. but who wants that anyway?

last december, at some random moment, momma called. after saying hello she said she called to tell me something. i waited, held my breath and listened. “live life, my sweet potato,” she said. “live life.” i exhaled.

photo-4with these wrinkles, this butt, this backyard, all the messiness, the highs, the lows, worries or not, i will, my sweet momma, try my best – to live life.

on sunday he said, “do not worry about life. instead, drink it in.”

yes.

photo-2

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