Old Ladies

I've been thinking about developing a new blogger persona.

I visited the blogger homepage, selected a username, a password, a different email address and presto.

Denied. It turns out blogger didn't really want to offer me the freedom of finding a new blog. Every username I dreamt up had already been chosen by a fellow online journaling junkie.

I've been wanting a new blog for awhile, a place where I feel I can fully express myself out loud without wondering who in my blogging sphere is trying to determine who I'm really talking about in my subtle vagueness, or what issues I'm really struggling with based on previous intimate conversations. If I knew how to express myself in more artistic venues, I would, believe me.

The truth is I've long known that I was the only one of my sisters who wasn't invited to dip into the artistic gene pool in the womb. In fact, the last artsy award I ever won was an honorable mention for a drawing I did during our 4th grade's Fire Prevention Week. Other kids illustrated good children putting out fires before leaving a campsite, or parents putting matches far away out of a child's reach. But I won my honorable mention for a drawing titled "When you see signs of rain, get out of the water." On the left side of the poster, I drew Smart Girl climbing the ladder out of the pool when she felt a few drops of rain. On the right, Not Smart Girl was shown in the shallow end of the pool being struck by a bolt of lightning, her hair and limbs zapped out in all directions.

I was not a morbid child, I promise. I just drew what I knew. And that was the pool.

When we lived in Ohio, we belonged to Woodhaven Swim & Tennis, the kind of place where everyone has to flash their laminated pastel membership cards in order to get past the front desk and into the chlorine-rich air hovering above the pool. Though I wasn't a swimmer (didn't even learn that till I was 13), I loved the pool. I loved pinching my nose and having a tea party with Paula underwater sitting indian-style. I loved playing our own version of shuffleboard by the shaded playground. I loved watching Sarah perform her dead man's float for us for what seemed like an eternity, but might actually have been a mere minute or two.

But what I loved most was the old ladies at the pool. The women who slid in to the pool smelling like all sorts of old people lotions, swim caps firmly stretched across their heads, and sauntered along the edge looking for the perfect resting point. Once there, they'd prop their elbows up on the ledge, arm fat dangling just above the water, backs pressed against the wall, and stretch their legs out before them. I suppose they were more or less bicycling. I don't think it mattered.

I liked to pretend I was one of them. I'm sure I was the only 8 year old who preferred "bicycling" on the ledge to diving from the high board, but I was drawn to old people. Nothing disturbed them - not kids cannonballing in and splashing their meditative auras, not swimmers who forced them to draw their legs in and avoid a collision. They closed their eyes and you couldn't even guess what they were thinking; they opened their eyes and took in the whole. Their old lady skin pruned up just like mine. I felt like it was good to be an old lady. It was familiar.

One late summer afternoon, I remember standing outside my pink bedroom I shared with Paula, the deep orange sunlight pouring through Sarah's peach bedroom, talking with my mom. She left me with a few words I never forgot: "You're like an old lady inside a little girl's body, Mary." I'm not saying I'm anywhere near as mature or as wise - ANYWHERE - as many old women are. But I've long felt I have an old soul. A sometimes crotchety, but mostly hearty, old soul.

It's that part of me that makes me long to leave the city and move to Prince Edward Island. To be Anne Shirley for awhile, but grow up to be Marilla Cuthbert. To be amazed by God that he built us to grow up and get wrinkles and crow's feet and gray hair or no hair. It's that part of me that refuses to start a new blog. To write here whatever I please because there's no point in making up somebody new.

The old lady in me just wants to lean in against the walls of my heart, let my dangly fat show, put my feet up and stretch out. She doesn't care if she's not artistic like the others in the blog pool, as academic, as philosophic, as hilarious. In fact, she feels quite content to be whatever she is. Even if that is a long-winded blogger.

Besides, the water's nice.