My hands are not my own. They belong to work email and spreadsheets first. They hug children good morning and good night. They must scritch the dog and open the mail. They make lists and cross them off. They check homework. When they are mine, it is needs not wants. Wash my hair. Blow my nose. Physical therapy maneuvers – and hold for a ten count. Breath out. Pull that leg closer.

If they are furloughed for a moment just to me, for what I want, I may knit. Or write. Or read. Sometimes they wander my body like someone coming home after thirty years and finding nothing where they left it. If my back is good enough I might get fancy and shave my legs or clip my toenails. Sagging skin where muscles used to be. So foreign. I am nostalgic for my young body, but not my young life.

In this, I don’t think I am unique. There is something universal about how peak wisdom and peak vigor and beauty don’t happen at the same time. Maybe they can’t. You can’t swagger under the weight of the world. Once life shows up, and you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, you see you are naked and vulnerable. People die. Bad things happen. Wisdom arrives with caution.

I say each year of my life is better than the last. I almost always mean it. Wry happiness replaces the ecstasy and agony of youth. Peace replaces adventure most of the time. A book shared by the fire instead of a make-out session on the hood of a car. A fair trade, and more comfortable. It’s spring now, and adventure still stirs in me when the seasons change. Anything seems possible.