Wrinkle Perspective
Me and The Banff Springs Hotel. It’s also old.
“Do I look wrinkly?” I asked my husband the other morning while preparing for work.
“A little,” he answered.
I was referring to my un-pressed cotton shirt. He was referring to my skin. I frowned and then we laughed.
Listen to me read this classic post:
It’s true now that every morning the lines etched in my face overnight by the fabric of the pillowcase are slower to disappear. The deep parentheses around my mouth make it look like an aside (or something like that). And when I smile, my eyes still sparkle, but they also crinkle up.
Along the river in Banff.
That’s life. If we’re lucky to live long enough, we wrinkle up a bit. Occasionally, though, I do catch myself feeling sad about this most natural of inevitabilities. Then I remember…
I remember the boy I knew who was killed in a car accident when we were in high school. He’ll never have the chance to get wrinkly, and the people who love him will never have the opportunity to see him change and grow and mature.
I remember the young girl, who, in despair, took her own life. There will be no crow’s feet for her, no crinkly, smiling eyes.
I remember my own mother, dying slowly when she was younger than I am now. No wrinkles for her, either. Instead, her body broke down in more significant and painful ways, robbing her of the chance to feel a touch of melancholy at growing older.
Posing with mountains and weathered driftwood makes me feel relatively young.
Out of respect for those who died before they could wrinkle, I’ll try today to open my heart a little wider and embrace those wrinkles, those changes, and my own healthy, natural aging process. There are worse things than growing older and changing as the years pass.
Being given the opportunity to see time alter and reshape me can be a gift, an unexpected sweetness that arrives with the passing of years. It all depends on how I see my wrinkles.
Lori Knutson 
Very important reminder, Lori. It recalls the question: Who wants to be 90? Answer: Every 89-year-old. I know I’m hoping for three digits.
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