Old/Young

Robins, both of them, found a white hair on my head. I found it too, later. It's three inches long and sticks straight out. I will probably hunt for it in the mirror out of odd vanity, the way I do the one white hair I discovered on my wristbone last summer.

I alternate between feeling very old and very young. My sister expressed a similar sentiment at Christmas. She's teaching high school in rural Mississippi, speaks jadedly of feeling lucky when one student understands her lesson and follows directions, agrees when I wonder whether it feels like pulling "whatever you can save" from a burning building.

In retrospect, fire metaphors are not good for her - she lost a house in Minneapolis that way three Decembers ago. Then, she saved her roommates and a pair of boots.

Anyway, later we both have a little much wine at dinner, and traipse mercilessly onto topics that are not necessarily appropriate for Christmas. Young young young.