Aftertune

Hello.

You can log on to www.whitehouse.gov and click on the link on that website to donate money to Haiti via the Red Cross. I sure hope my $40 gets there because even though it's a drop in the bucket I wanted to do something.

Today I had the dry cleaner hem my new black pants and jogging pants. The jacket that came with the track suit I didn't get hemmed as the sleeves are not too long. That is all I did today.

I'm back to form: earlier I replaced the shirt hangers in my winter closet with a matching set that was lying on the floor in the foyer closet. Now I have a big shopping bag full of blonde wood hangers of various stripes suit skirt shirt and a friend is going to take them when I see her next. She reminded me that I'm Type A because who else but a true Type A personality would have matching hangers in her closet? That was my intent in switching the hangers: to make sure everything matched. A little obsessive, no?

Today I went in a shop and bought a sunny yellow scarf that is already tied that I can slip around my neck in the spring and summer. I can wear it with a black tee shirt and white pants. Where would I be able to buy white pants for summer? I suddenly want a pair of white pants because I can visualize this outfit in my mind.

That's how obsessed I am folks. I will put this item on the wish list for the image consultant to track down. She will give me the URLs or store locations where I can buy the items she recommends.

Why not? 45 truly is the "oh, hell" birthday. I'm reading Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor. The author of The Secret Life of Bees and her daughter alternate chapters in this book written when her daughter graduated college and she turned 50. I want my mother to read this book too. All women should read this gorgeous book. I cried at times because I felt that with a slightly different change of circumstance Sue Monk Kidd could be talking about my mother and me.

Turning 50 you begin the Crone or Wise Woman years. Sue Monk Kidd mused on the loss of her fertility and the loss of her daughter who was becoming her own person and struggling to make her way in the world. The daughter is depressed after she gets a rejection letter from the school where she wanted to study Greek culture.

Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Taylor Kidd in the book are traveling in Greece months before the 50-year old begins writing The Secret Life of Bees. Imagine: 50 beckons. Yes I will re-invent myself again then. I have six years left. Okay? Do you understand? Each of those years I'm going to travel somewhere far away beginning this spring.

I wish I could tell you that life is nothing but blue skies and I cannot.

What I can tell you: you have the choice in how you respond to your trials.

Age with grace. There is nothing beautiful about a woman who is sad to be herself wrinkled and old. Hettie Jones wrote about this in her poem "Aftertune" that closes out her poetry book Drive. It is about "a crone in the marshes singing and singing." I love that book of poetry. Hettie Jones memoir How I Became Hettie Jones is also a great book about her marriage to Leroi Jones and life in the Beat Generation in 1950s and 1960s New York City. I met Hettie at a poetry event and she was impressed that I had bought and read her memoir. How could I not? I judged that book by its colorful red-and-yellow cover with her before-and-after photos and the inside did not disappoint. She went from pearls and a silk dress to gypsy earrings and a richly lived emotional and musical life. From a teacup college to the heart of the counterculture.

I'm reminded of an aunt whose birthday party I attended when she turned 80. I had given her an amethyst necklace not knowing purple was her favorite color and she was all aflutter over the necklace. More interestingly: she told us she looked forward to each new year that she got a chance to live. She looked the image of youth even in her late age. I remember her words now and tell myself this is what I must do: celebrate the life I live every year. Our birthdays are not endings they are the beginning of the next chapter in our life. We get to decide how we want to respond to the years.

Always be kind to yourself and gentle. Strive to maintain a positive spirit even in the face of hard times. It serves us no purpose to worry because worrying doesn't make us feel any better. Optimism inoculates us from full-blown depression. I was always lucky I could pick myself up.

I would not spend $20K or however much it costs on that miracle LifeStyle Lift surgery to take 10 years off my face. Once the face goes then your breasts go and everything else and it could take lots of money and effort and exhaust you trying to fix every part of you that you negate.

Celebrate: don't negate.

Life your life. Love your life.

Be grateful for what you have and what God has given you.

You have the right to make beautiful music in your golden years.

Sing it baby.