Readers
I've begun wearing readers, those magnifying spectacles that help a middle-aged person to see what's close again. I've mostly been ill-at-ease in conversations about the various seasonal changes of the human body, so I am almost surprised to report that I am experiencing immense joy in this ocular seasonal shift and taking profound pleasure in this marvelous token of aging. You young-ins, just you wait!
Without apology or shame, I am positively luxuriating in the fact that I now wear readers. Like the childhood character Fancy Nancy, I adore wearing these spectacles and want to use fancy words to celebrate it. I have five different colors of them already; they are pretty cheap! I'd like to acquire ever more vividly colored ones. After using them to read, I love to slide them up on top of my ever-graying head, lose them there, and then ask, like an absent-minded queen, "Where are my readers?!" Then I reach up and find them there, right where I put them. My husband and children roll their eyes at me as I perform this silly little routine, and have no plans to stop doing! (I do not mind their eye-rolling. One day, I hope, they will fully share in my good-humored joy.) I especially love to wear my readers low on my nose, peering out from them like a strict schoolteacher, or like an owl in the woods, equal parts serene, severe, unflappable, and wise.
None of this feels like a role that I'm playing. It feels like me, being me, in a marvelous new middle season of life. I'm taking in the goodness of this particular season with attentive gratitude. And I'll readily admit that, having struggled for months to see and read what's close, and finally admitting that middle-age reality to myself, it is a sublime pleasure to be able to see with relative ease again.
I'm a reluctant user of Instagram, but I've noticed that I typically upload images of things to which I'm nearly nose-to-nose. (Admittedly, Instagram is one basically one long infomercial, making all of us strange advertisers of ourselves to one another, with periodic interruptions of non-commercial content. With apologies, newsletters have that vibe too.) If you scroll through my entries there, you'll see I post pictures of things that are often tight in, low to the ground, and quiet: flowers, mushrooms, ice, rocks, moss, and snails. That any of these images exist at all means that I went there too: into a place of wonder, peering in, low down, close up, and quiet.
To all who replied to me from my last newsletter about why you read me, and why you subscribe here. Each reply reminded me of the preciousness of readers in my life, and I know you have them too: people who help us see what's up close, low down, even down at rock bottom, likely quiet and even hidden, and who enter into all the joy and goodness that is there.
If you have made it this far, thank you for being among my readers.
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Brief idea/commercial break:
Would you consider gathering a spring 2024 or autumn 2024 book club around my book, Keys to Bonhoeffer's Haus? It makes a great discussion focus point for neighbors, whether or not they share faith with you, about the tasks we all share to keep our common life, together.
If you have read my book, would you take a moment to rate/review it on Amazon and Goodreads? It helps others discover it. (The mighty algorithms make it so. Of course, a book club of gathered neighbors feels weak, but is far more powerful than algorithms; see above!)