Women, like water, are flexible and can take the shape of the space they are given; and too like water, they can change the shape of all around them to suit their needs.
How to communicate myself to you? Woman, wife, lover, friend, sister, seeker, leader, teacher, child - unique yet no different from any other woman. I have turned my hand at many wheels, going where I have been led & serving in whatever role has been provided, and have reached what some call "middle age" (although it is said now that forty is the new twenty, fifty looms closer before me than forty rests behind).
I find "middle" age to be an apter term than it seemed from outside. I blast my radio as I zoom down the highway, rebellion stirring me as if still a teen. But let the actual teens next door thump their stereo after 11 on a weeknight, and I am every stereotypical cranky neighbor-lady complaining to the authorities about their rowdiness. Glucosamine has become my drug of choice; substance wins out over style more often than not as common sense triumphs over peer pressure. Twinges & creaks greet the morning when I rise; creams & potions beckon from my vanity, whispering promises of smoothness & firmness where time has left its footprint.
He is the reason for my "redux", my rebirth. Not because he caused it or required it; it began before he arrived. If anything, he is the reward for the remaking of myself I had started before I even knew he existed. But he also spurs me on, inspires me to be more, not for him but for my own fulfillment. He supports the foundation on which I will build my future self, as I do for him.
So here I am, in that middle passage between frivolous maiden & world-wise crone. And set to decide for myself who I want to become - a river ready to cut her own course through the landscape rather than to be bounded by banks of another's making.
