I ran into an 89-year-old parishioner from my church yesterday, as I arrived at the local Stop and Shop. I’ve always admired her from afar. Well, I’ve admired her in person and have told her that, but she has no recollection of ever seeing me before. That would have bothered me ten years ago, but now that I’m 49 and can’t remember something I told my husband last week and deemed “very important,”  I can’t point fingers.

She’s really a cool “old dame,” as they said in her salad days … or perhaps in her lasagna days. She’s a reader at our church and she said that she practices “a thousand times” before each reading. I told her that I thought she was exaggerating, and she said, “Only slightly.”

What makes her so enviable is her wealth: her material wealth and her spiritual wealth. She dresses in an understated manner, but her clothes are made of the best materials and she always wears lovely wool or soft leather gloves in the cooler weather. She is also always made up. But her makeup isn’t gaudy. Her eyelids were lined with black, and her lids were powdered with a lavender shade. I had to look twice to see if it was the natural color of her lids or if the color was augmented. Even after my examination, it was hard to tell since it looked so natural. Her lips were colored a pretty pink and her cheeks held a hint of blush. All in all, she looked “pretty as a picture.” Immediately after my inventory I resolved to never give up on makeup, but to rather keep track of my age so that I wouldn’t look overly made up.

During our conversation she mentioned that she had had three major operations and procedures since June, but she was heading to “winter” in Georgia after the holidays and she had a cruise to Portugal (by herself) booked for this March.

What an inspiration. After she wandered away, I vowed to keep fun in my life, no matter how old I was.  Then my husband called to remind me to buy toilet paper.