Where Has It Gone?

Lately, I find myself looking for something I seem to have lost. I find myself moving slower, not hearing as well, relying on glasses to see, losing my hair, memory not as good as it once was and sometimes I wonder who I am. I look at photographs and wonder if that fresh young face is really mine. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is middle age, when eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday." Yes, when I ask the question where has it gone?  I am referring to my youth!

It seems to have happened overnight but I know that each day, added another layer of age and continues adding. The strange thing is that I still feel the same because as my father told me once, "Your body may get old, but your emotions do not get old, they stay exactly the same as when you were young." I suppose my heart and soul will forever be young but I sure wish my body could keep up with them!

"Real age has its pleasures, 

which, though different 

are not less than the 

pleasures of youth." 
W. Somerset Maugham

"In youth the days are short and the years long.

In old age, the years are short and the days long."

Pope Paul VI

What I picture is the old-fashioned calendar in movies to show the passing of time. As the pages of the calendar flip by on the screen to show time rushing by is very much how I feel as I get older! My lament, as well as many of my same-aged friends, is "where has it gone?"