I went through all the old pictures I had hidden in the basement. Humidity made some of them tacky. I did the rest...

Anyway, something my best friend gypsy told me in passing kept coming back to me: "you've been skinny all your life..." I'm looking at the pictures from when I was a wee lass, all through school, pregnancies (I burned all those), kids, the various bfs, etc etc etc, and while I am not very pretty in a handful of them, indeed, I have ALWAYS been thin. Where the hell did I get the thought that my stomach protruded, or that I was chunky in the thigh area? Not even the pictures that were at my worse (and boy, do I think I look ugly in those) do I look anything but slim...

and I was/am pretty. I never thought I was pretty. As a young girl, I had a fragile sort of look, all big eyes and lips and fine face. As a mom, depending on the situation, I looked well or very sickly. Yet you can see fine features in all of them, even the goofy ones. Perhaps its age; they say when you look back at 40, you realize you were prettier than you thought you were.

I'm gonna be 50; gone are the full lips and the tight skin on the face, yet I have fine features, strong and well delineated. I am still slim and not saggy at all. Even my skin, showing it's age, still looks like it glows. Dare I enjoy this? I don't know. I just wish I hadn't taken all this time to see the pretty girl I was/am/will be.