The Fountain of Youth

I don’t feel old.

My children range in age from 33 to 40 and my grandchildren from not quite 1 to 18! 

I still remember holidays with my brothers and sister and cousins as we played with each other and the newest baby in the family.  Later on I remember hanging out with my youngest aunt whose husband was almost more of a brother than an uncle to me.

Now she is a great grandmother!  How can this be?

Grandmas and great grandmas are supposed to be crones, wrinkled and wise with age.  Their backs bent under the weight of long years baking bread and cookies, their eyes dim from sewing under faint lights in the wee small hours of the morning. 

My own grandma ran a business well into her nineties.  She was a notoriously bad cook except when it came to butterscotch pies and a fashionable dresser for as long as she lived. 

I look in the mirror and see silver gray hair on a smiling face.  It is the smile that hides the wrinkles and I have lots to smile about. 

Ponce de Leon supposedly went searching for the fountain of youth, but I may have discovered where it is all on my own.  Hidden deep within the contentment of living, behind the joy of every day, and manifested on a face that finds love in the eyes of people surrounding me lies the elixir that keeps me feeling young.