just a thought

When I look at my Grandmother's face sometimes I become transfixed, almost hypnotised, by the deep lines I see. What caused the crevices and troughs that mark her face? Was it pain? My mother's mistakes felt as dearly as if her own? I wonder whether she noticed the arrival of each one or whether one morning she looked in the mirror and realised her youth had passed.

Sometimes I like to think of the lines as bages of merit. The laughter lines by her twinkling eyes formed after years of my Grandfather's dreadfuul jokes. Each one a kind of memorial to him. In anti-aging adverts we are warned of the damage caused by free-radicals attacking the defenceless skin; the body giving up against the onslaught. But surely this cannot be true. The lines on my Grandmother's face are not the result of surrender.

In her face I see her life. Her secret code: visible to all yet impossible to decipher. Each crinkle, I imagine, contains some small residue. A hint of her mother's perfume, dust from the factory floor, sweet tears shed years ago. If the body responds to other external stimuli - why not respond to the passage of time in a similar manner. Memories made tangible.

When i look at my Grandmother's face and the hazy blurring these memories create i cannot help but wonder what she sees. Does she long for taut, inexperienced youth? Or, like me, see the magnificance of memories made visible.