20 Years Is A Long Time To Spend Doing Anything

It's almost impossible to find my sunglasses in my gigantic purse, 

so I walk around squinting all the time.

This afforded me the opportunity to notice that

I live in pursuit of the sun.

It's not poetic, it's a fact:

I get up with the sun in my eyes

and I go home with the sun in my eyes.

I have not been graced with a similar epiphany 

about what I do all day in the interim.

Twenty years is a long time to spend doing anything.

I am just now getting acquainted with the idea that I know 

what twenty years feels like.

It's cliché, but my experience supports the popular notion 

that as your lifespan stretches out, the days speed up. 

It's March, then it's April, then your father calls to tell you 

that Grammy died twenty years ago today. 

And you think, am I that old?

And when your chin wrinkles up, and your nostrils flair out, 

you think, am I still that young?

Twenty years is a long time to spend doing anything.

Just last night I was talking to an almost long lost friend, 

swapping womanly stories of anticipated pregnancies --

not imminent, you know, but theoretical --

and the new, strange game of picking baby names with a man.

I told her about my little plans for Agnes Lou,

and the funny part about how the original Agnes never liked her name.

If she were still here she would probably tell me that 

Ag is not a name you choose to pass on.

I kind of agree that the whole Ag thing is unfortunate, 

but I'm a woman now, not so young, 

and if I can bring another Agnes into my life, 

so help me God, and Grammy, I'll do it. 

Copyright D.M.Dellinger Hlatky. April 2, 2009.