To get used to: the reading glasses, the hair I no longer wear long, the too-red fingernails. But there is the birthday necklace, tea in a white pot, the exposed brick wall. When I was 27 I sat in an Asheville cafe with my boyfriend, bagels and coffee likely before us. We were so young. At the next table a couple, early 60s, sat reading the New York Times, glancing up occasionally to share something of note, to sip coffee. They held themselves with an easy comfort. Someday that will be us, I said to my boyfriend, and he smiled back at me. It was never us. But somehow it became me anyway, and across the table the right sweet guy reading too.

June 28, 2015