I am now in my 6th decade of life. My hair is almost entirely silver. My jowls have arrived, and the wrinkles around my eyes will show you my general mood.

I’m a happy old wrinkly grandmother.

I know that I’m chubby, I know that I’m gray. I get it. I’ve earned these marks. They show that I have lived.

For the most part, I am happy to observe time moving along merrily. I know that nothing is permanent, and that time can’t be slowed, or stopped, or forced to run backwards.

My life is in its early Fall season, I’d guess. The beautiful pressures of summer are over. Now it’s time to settle in a bit, make some stock to hold us through the long winter, to think about which good books we’d like to keep us company as it snows.

I don’t think about time passing as much as you might think. I try, really, really hard to keep my focus on the moment in front of me.

But sometimes old Mother Nature reaches in to give me a poke.

This evening she did exactly that.

I was standing on my deck, in the back of the house where Paul and I have lived for 29 years. I was resting my chin on my hand, and gazing out into our woods. My eyes weren’t really focused. I was just sort of looking into the distance.

But then I saw the little golden leaves in front of me. Slowly unfurling into the warm sun. Little oak leaves.

I pulled my focus back and looked at the tree that was reaching out, offering me those tender leaves.

And there stood a strong, young, vibrant oak, bursting into life on the edge of our woods. It’s branches were leaning toward the deck. Toward me.

My head swam. Time went whooooshing past me, leaving me reeling with vertigo.

When we moved into this house (last year? last month? three decades ago?) there was a tall, strong white pine standing behind our deck, just on the edge of the woods. It had thick, lustrous branches and a tall, straight trunk. One branch leaned in so close to our deck that I was once able to coax a chickadee from it’s tip to my palm.

I loved that tree.

For years, I watched it age and wither and become brittle. A few years ago we knew that it was finished, and we had the guardian pine taken down.

The sun came shining down. Little saplings sprang up in the place where the old tree once stood.

And while I wasn’t looking, an oak sapling raced toward the skies. It opened it’s arms, reached for the sun, and grew.

Today I stood looking at the woods. One confident, cocky oak tree seemed to have taken center stage. I had a sense of it grinning at me as it passed me by.

I closed my eyes and saw the old white pine that used to be the star of our particular stage. I could imagine her spirit smiling at the exuberance of the teen aged oak.

I felt time racing by.

I am surely getting older. If I somehow forget that fact, I have no doubt that Mother Nature will remind me.