Ransom Notes

I have come to believe that vanity, and not hearing, is the last sense to leave the expiring body. I settled into this physical shape as though it is the most comfortable in the world for me – and indeed, it is!

Once upon a time (that beginning making the tale worth the tell) I wished for a perfection of form, an enviable figure with a trim waist, bubble butt, hair down to here & legs up to there. Yet this body is the crowning achievement of my physical plane.

In 2009, I succumbed to peer pressure & went for a physical. The assistant measured my height at 5’1.” “Wait a minute,” I said, “I’m 5’2.” She didn’t even smile as she said, “Not anymore.” I could hear her thinking, “Another of these over-50’s with no understanding of shrinkage.” Wrong…I did know shrinkage, just thought it’d never apply to me! I knew it as dry fact, without the damper of experience.

“I can be as tall as I imagine myself to be,” I mumbled, standing under that slim metal measuring rod. Gravity, whether pulling me down or pushing (a late-arriving theory) can do its worst. I need not pay attention. My visual world pretty much ends at 5’3”, so if the item is on the top shelf, I don’t buy it until the younger (taller) attendants walk me back down the aisle to my etheric imprint to show it to me. “Up here, Ma’am, see?”

(I quit doing Girl Scout troops when the third graders collectively looked down on me. I started training adults instead, where we were all around the same height.)

True, I never returned to a physician’s office. No need for more bad news, yeah? They seldom have tidings of great joy. In fact, their track record is quite incommensurate in that regard.

I call it compacting, or condensing, not shrinking. Semantics rule…I should know.

I’m not timing out, I’m indemnifying.

In the days when I had a cute little figure, when I bought for fashion at boutiques & trunk shows & fixed my hair for husbands, I didn’t really pay so much attention to vanity.

It was a fleeting time, to be sure, before the situation changed. The Pill put on ten pounds I’ve yet to lose 50 years later. The hysterectomy seemed to create lots of storage space for adipose. And since the area is stretchy to allow for growth; wait, I don’t want to go there. You’ll see no profile shots of me on this site. I didn’t think my female parts took up quite as much space as has become available.

This body is the go-to one. I wake up to reassemble it every morning, molecule by molecule. So what if it bulges here & there? This is why science invented elastic & necessity invented Spandex.

I burst into song to be free of single-minded vanity which reduces life to what actually fits & looks nice. Too limiting! It’s a burden I’d rather not bear. My smile weighs a lot less than the rest of me & that’s what counts. I love & honor fresh greens; I just prefer pasta.

The twinges & creaks concurrent with approaching seventy nourish the stellar joy of rising to walk two miles, attempting to dance my ass off now & again, & knowing I’m not competition for anything but a contest of wits.

Being a plushie surely stands out over all those Barbie’s.

I guess I’m still growing into me.