Age is no barrier. It's a limitation you put on your mind.--Jackie Joyner-Kersee

I see my Mamaw Minnie alot walking around the town of Memphis, Tennessee.  Yesterday, a woman crossed the road in front of me in a grey sweatshirt, blue jeans, clogs, and a kerchief over her metal grey hair...I slowed down and came to a complete stop in my new car.  When she turned to look at me because she had finally noticed a car crossing the road, her blue eyes twinkled behind the cat-eyed old lady glasses she had on.  For a second, I saw my Mamaw.  I smiled and waved at the lady.  Then the face transformed to another elderly lady I had never seen before, but she waved at me with her gnarled hands and bright chapped red palms.  It was okay she wasn't really my Mamaw, but it was good to see her just for a minute.

Last night I went looking for her on the ley lines, the planes where we as Witches and Pagans travel.  A scene came forth...New York city, I was in a bus again.  I am sitting on the bus rocking back and forth with the speed of the vehicle looking out the window at the people mulling back and forth like ants going to their destination with packages, and umbrellas and coats slung over their hooked arms.  There in the middle of all that people traffic is a woman with iron grey hair and a bright yellow kerchief on her head.  She has on a polyester shirt with bright pink flowers on it and navy blue stripes that run down it vertically, the pearlescent buttons that are snap like twinkle in the fog, her faded blue denims and her busted out tennis shoes present pieces of flesh that peak out at me...Yes, it is my Mamaw.  

She waves at me, I wave back...then she takes off at a pace like a person gearing up for a race.  As she winds up she jogs, then she sprints, then she is faster than light and becomes a blur...she is ahead of the window at the bus.  The bus stops I get off.  She is waiting for me at the corner of the curb.  She has beautiful blue black hair, vivid red lipstick that almost is alarming, pale white shining skin, eyes so bright they seem unreal and blue as the ocean.  She grabs my hand and we walk together, saying nothing just swinging our arms and hands back and forth and humming like we did when she was flesh and blood.  I peacefully rub her young flesh hands, and hear her jingling laughter while marveling at her transformation and ripe youth. She winks at me, I stick my tongue out...and then I lean over and hug her and it smells like vanilla root, sage, and hyacinths.  

I wake.  She is still here.  Every time I see an older woman I see my grandmothers spirit within her, jumping out to remind me that she loves me.  I know she is never gone, and that she and I will have good times again.  I pray that one day when I am grey I will look in the mirror and see her smiling back at me.  Maybe I came to be so attached to my Mamaw so that I would be able to accept aging and the special beauty that comes with it.  She was the most active funny woman I have ever met. 

I did not celebrate my birthday this year.  No one celebrated it for me. I started to study the aspect of the Crone, and accept the possibility no the inevitability that I was in the throes of menopause and starting to not just "hear the call" but had her in my home.  I froze.  I clammed up.  I was living in the Nile and it was not the river...ha ha.

I go back to the ley lines, I see that old woman running at the speed of light and I realize that is the magic of the Crone.  You have to see beyond appearances and notice the details in the middle of the haze and confusion of "ant-like/worker bee" activities.  I am getting there.

Thank you for patiently waiting for me to have something I wanted to share with you all again...and for the gift of your time.  Happy Holly Days!

THIS week, take this quote to heart:  
The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts and we grow happier as we grow older.--William Lyon Phelps