Somehow my daughter and I are sharing photos on our phones. It is beyond lovely to see what she finds worthy to record. This image is her’s :)
Doing the Math
I am wearing jeans that feel too tight
as I have gained three pounds eating mini candy bars
that are in a candy bowl at my office.
The mini munchies are 100 calories a bite.
I am trying to substitute with radishes, a large one is 2 calories,
but fifty radishes do not give me the joy of one peanut butter cup.
Mouth orgasms = infinity!
I became a therapist at age 51.
I am too old.
I am thankful I am so old.
I am old enough to appreciate something termed the Lifespan.
Old enough to see themes in decades.
Recently there is a woman next to me at a workshop,
she has a slit in her skirt. Twenties.
There was a man with a polyester dress shirt tucked in, Sixties.
Women are paying $250 for a set of fake eyelashes
that are woven into their real ones,
precluding mascara and falsies, no more little strips of glue.
I charge $90 an hour for most clients
but for a few $80, $70, $60, on down the line,
to one I see for nothing.
I slide my scale based on privilege, oppression,
opportunity, the color of one’s skin,
the hardship of one’s story.
How do we calculate trauma? injustice?
Can one estimate bad and dumb luck?
I feel good about my earnings
when I compare flipping burgers for minimum wage,
but two sets of lashes for $500?
I am subtracting, jealous, devalued.
My children may have children.
I try and remember my grandmother in her fifties,
mourning in the Arizona sun after her husband died.
She showed me how to push back my cuticles.
It hurt but I didn’t tell her.
I want to be spry and hip and remembered,
I want to be at family weddings and hold great grandchildren.
I sat outside on a small bit of yard yesterday
after being in a city,
the smell of wet grass drying,
listening to the bass of bees sipping from wisteria,
I was plumped again,
I was a doe in a thicket.
I consider carrying capacity, biodiversity,
all creatures great and small,
how we will make it,
ensure it,
keep it,
this planet plumped again.