From the Brain of Dr. Nicki: Preparing

I find myself nudged up against my future, like a waiting room patient finding simple, pleasurable distraction in people watching. 

She knows soon she will be called to go to the too-cold room where probing happens and the uncomfortable questions that must be asked are asked. The place where brows sometimes furrow and preparations are made for things that have not happened yet but certainly some day shall. 

In stature I am shorter than I used to be but at the same time my expanded breath, scope and increasing tenderness lets me feel ever more grown. 

My husband each day seems sweeter than the day before and altogether altered from the three decades past man I married. Love has outlived frustration, fury and my too-frequent desire to flee. 

I can't believe so much life time has passed. Aging is a precarious, insistent matter. Most attempt to forbid it. 

Me too. 

But it will not be ignored. 

Still, I am more than I have ever been. I have more to offer than ever before. I remain zestful and relentless and passionate. I do not appear to be slowing down. But when I gaze in the mirror I see the embrace of my future self. 

Sometimes I'm embarrassed.

"Why are you sneaking up on me this way?" I think. 

She is not sneaking, though, truth be told. I've seen her coming day-by-day...coaching me past my denial and deliberate refusals. 

Acceptance, as in most things, is not easy. 

It's a journey. 

I do not take the necessity for such acceptance lightly. This does not mean laying down my interests or intentions. It doesn't mean either laying down my very life or life force. In fact, I believe it time to rally. To jump up and proclaim: 

I AM HERE!!! HERE AM I!!

And so I say to you today: 

Be Bold. 

Live your life no matter what your age as if you too are in the waiting room of your future. Because you are. 

Take my hand. 

Together we shall walk into the probing room and ask the uncomfortable questions that must be asked. 

Let us prepare.