In Your Dreams

This past Sunday my husband and I had lunch with his mother in her independent living facility. Still as sharp as a tack, she is always immaculately dressed, accessorized, coiffed, manicured and although dependent on a walker, her essence and carriage speak volumes. She is bright and engaging, yet has had to adapt to the aches and often debilitating maladies that come with growing older. Sometimes she gives in to the pain and bemoans the aging process. So, I wonder, "How does she see herself? What age is she in her dreams?"

My mother-in-law, having been married twice, and then pursued by a kind and steady man, who became her "significant other" for years, until his passing, still desires to be sought.  Does she feel twenty, thirty, sixty, or her real age of eighty seven years young, still hoping for a new beau? "Sometimes, when I first wake in the morning, I think I can walk right into the bathroom on my own steam. In my dreams I am still the girl I was from long ago. But when I look in the mirror I know this is what it is." I see in her the young woman in the pictures, lining her marble topped dresser, the possibilities not lost in reverie.