Maiden, Mother, Crone....

This skin that holds me together, and defines me by texture and color and smell, has been changing so slowly and constantly that it evaded my notice.  Where did the smoothness go and the sleek sheen of my golden tan?  The long soft fullness of the hair on my head has broken and dulled and needs care. I am like the Autumn now.  The brightness, fading into a knowing and deeper shade of wisdom.  I am becoming more like the blending of the earth as the dying leaves make a blanket on its edge. I am becoming less of the sunlight and more of the shadow.  The in-between age, before coming into the glowing stage of the moon.  This is middle age.

Women, mostly, tend to become invisible in middle age.  Not so much "the unseen" but more like "the overlooked."  It is an easy thing to have happen.  Men are still quite vibrant and present, in their jobs and their lives...with people depending upon their sharpness and honed skills from years of practise.  Holding up the world with their bare hands right up until the time of transfer to their sons.... but women....oh, women.  Women flitter and bend and are constantly moving until they become thin like the air.  Without them, men could not stay so solid, yet the more we flutter, the more we lose of our covering.  We flitter away all that previously defined us, so people don't recognize us without our skins...and all we have left is our soul.  Right out there bare naked.  It is a drawn-out process, and takes a long time to peel away, flake away, fall away.... but when it does.... well.  Boom.  That's when we find our power.  That is when we become the Moon.

I am looking forward to being a light again.  Not like when I was young, and I was warm and bright like the sun.  No, I will be cool and blue and glowing and will hold up the oceans and the seas and swim in the ebb and the flow of the moon's power.  I will be gliding and streaming and skimming on the stars with my bodiless soul... leaving a trail of shimmering womenly light.... ageless.... so old that age won't matter and I will become real.  I watch my mother shrivel into a perfect beauty that will soon shine through her layers of years and time and skin....and understand that her path is my path...and on it goes.

I sit in the home I have made cozy, with all my thoughts of my family and loved ones wrapped within....cleaning and straightening and dusting.... seemingly with no purpose but to enfold us all together for this short season in time.... and know that my skin is starting to fall off.... to wrinkle and shrink...to change.  It is my time to let it go, so I will be able to feel my soul emerging and growing.  My moonlight is nigh.  All is well.