There's a picture of an old woman sitting in front of my computer. It's one of those images that I saw once, at an art fair in Portland years ago, and fell in love with it. I couldn't afford it at the time, so I walked away. But I was with my mother and sister, who were visiting me, and they snuck back and bought it for me together.

It's an image that I'm supposed to have, if I believed in that sort of thing.

It reminds me what happiness is, what beauty is. The picture is composed of warm russets and orange, sienna and white. The old womans wrinkles for a deeply lined map of what it means to be human, written across her face and hands. Her rheumy old eyes are magnified by tears, of indeterminate joy or pain. Her brows are drawn and her hands cover her mouth.

I can't tell you how much I love this picture, how comforting it is to me. It feels like it's pulling me forward into my own old age. Into a sense of peace and joy, a comfort with death and a contentment with life. It reminds me that a part of me doesn't want to die young. A part of me wants to look down through the frame of my own eyes someday and see gnarled knuckles and heavily pruned hands. I can almost feel the pain in those hands. And there's no hopelessness in that pain. It's the pain of a machine that has done its job well its entire life. Oil doesn't sooth the moving bits anymore, but that's ok. It's time for the bits to stop moving, to rest and breakdown and provide fodder for the next generation.

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