For a long time the hardest thing was not being pretty anymore. I mean, I was still pretty, but I was no longer the youngest and prettiest in the room. I was no longer able to make a real entrance. People no longer said, "Who is that thin girl with the blue eyes and the short hair?" In my thirties I became just one of the moms. Then, groups of men stopped noticing me. First the ones in their twenties, then thirties, then forties, and as I bear down hard on sixty the group of men most liable to notice me are wearing WWII vet hats. I am dead serious about this. It's hard to watch your body change shape. Hands, arms, legs, all different than they were--never, never to return. That beautiful young girl has vanished from the face of the earth. Then my babies began to vanish. My boys, who longed for me to hold them, who snuggled next to me on the couch each night, went away. I felt relief. They were out with their friends, playing in a band, away at college, married. They have wrinkles, gray hair and 401K's. When I see them, they no longer sit next to me. I can no longer rub their hair, over and over; it just wouldn't feel right. But next, a miracle. I had a grandson and loved him with a passion I never even felt with my own children. People had told me to expect this, but I didn't understand until I saw him....then I understood. But now he is out in the world, at the park, with his friends, and he no longer snuggles with me, because he's ten. My joints hurt, my thumbs are quite arthritic, and I had an old lady fall this summer, shattering my arm. My mother is growing older and I know that she will grow truly old and ill and die someday. I know that for sure now. My career is stalled, but I do a very good job at what I do, and I find joy in my work and in my competence. You know how they say you lose brain cells as you age? What a myth. I grow more and more wise, I learn new things every day, and one of my biggest fears is that I will die before I've read all of the books I want to read. But as I grow more wise, people want to hear what I say less and less. So I'm sitting back, taking it all in, letting the great world spin.