Still Beautiful

[image from eons.com]

She is ninety,

slim  and bent

with arthritis,

moving slowly,

and with pain.

She can barely walk,

and her hands are

gnarled claws,

bent and curled

and stiffened,

yet, morning, noon

and night,

when she

whisks the chapatis

together,

her hands move

as swiftly as a girl's,

practiced with the

thousands

of chapatis

she has made

for her husband

all the years

of their lives.

Today,

they both were ill,

huddled under blankets,

yet when he called her,

she hobbled over,

tending him

as tenderly

as if he were

a babe.

When she grew tired,

she sat up in  bed,

with an expression on her face

that made me think

of the three year old

she once was,

sleepy and grumpy,

yet unwilling to lay down

and miss

the grownup party

going on

in the other room.

Her long silver

pony tail,

her slim figure,

her oval face,

told me

she was

beautiful,

once,

a young girl

laughing and flinging

her hair

over her shoulder,

eyes alight and mischievous,

enticing her young husband,

her step a light dance

on the earth.

Now,

inch by painful inch,

bent over her walker,

she creeps down the hall

and gifts me with chapatis,

because she knows

I love them.

She is still

beautiful,

so beautiful,

just in

another way.