An ageless heart
The cruise ship was crowded with people off for three days of
pleasure. Ahead of me in the passageway walked a tiny woman in
brown slacks, her shoulders hunched, her white hair cut in a bob.
From the ship's intercom came a familiar tune - "Begin the
Beguine." And suddenly, a wonderful thing happened. The
woman, unaware anyone was behind her, did a quick and graceful dance step
- back, shuffle, slide.
As she reached the door to the dining salon, she re-assembled her dignity,
and stepped soberly through.
Younger people often think folks my age are beyond romance, dancing or
dreams. They see us as age has shaped us; camouflaged by wrinkles, thick
waists and gray hair.
They don't see the people who live inside.
No one would ever know that I am still the skinny girl who grew up in a
leafy suburb of Boston. Inside, I still think of myself as the youngest child in
a happy family headed by a mother of great beauty and a father of unfailing
good cheer.
And I am still the romantic teenager who longed for love, the young adult
who aspired to social respectability - but whom shall I tell?
We are all like the woman in the ship's passageway, in whom the music still
echoes. We are the sum of all the lives we once lived. We show the grown-
up part, but inside we are still the laughing children, the shy teens, the
dream-filled youths. There still exists, most real, the matrix of all we were or
ever yearned to be.
In our hearts we still hear "Begin the Beguine" - and when we are alone, we
dance.
- Beth Ashley
