![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/IMG_8658.jpg\" "\\"Middle-aged")
<\/a>Faded a tad, but don't discount 'em yet!<\/p><\/div>\n
Call me vain, but actually, the blossoms\u00a0today still looked pretty good.\u00a0 They were really nice.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0\u00a0Actually, they were quite\u00a0okay.\u00a0 They were still worth photographing, for the most part.\u00a0\u00a0Pretty much.\u00a0 At moments, when you looked at them just right, they looked attractive, yeah, attractive, that’s right.\u00a0 Almost beautiful.\u00a0 Almost.\u00a0 Umm… get my drift?\u00a0\u00a0 They (and I)\u00a0are still healthy and rarin’ to\u00a0go, at least pretty much.\u00a0 It’s not quite\u00a0like it was (at least for me)\u00a010 or 20 years ago to be sure, but\u00a0still, not bad.\u00a0\u00a0(thankfully, I’ll be middle-aged for a number of years more,\u00a0while they’ll be that way a day or two more).\u00a0 I can imagine these trees having odd little aches and pains, wondering about a quickening pulse here, a pain in the knee or elbow or side there.\u00a0 If these trees had a consciousness and could be concerned about their aging bodies, I’m fairly sure they would be worrying about the unusual, unexplainable pains up and down their trunks, wondering if they had cancer or leukemia or maybe the Ebola virus, or possibly just a heart attack.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Aging buds, skyline linked<\/p><\/div>\n
They\u00a0were good to see, still somewhat stunning, but it was plain they weren’t what they once were.\u00a0 I’m not going to argue about that for them or me.\u00a0 How could they look as perky and perfect today as they did a week ago today? \u00a0 Only a small portion of the blossoms were still brilliant white.\u00a0 Most were a bit duller, some bordering on drab, even.\u00a0 That there were about a million or them, scads of drab blooms, was their saving grace.\u00a0 Any one or two or twenty of them, you might not have wanted in a vase on the dining room table.\u00a0 But taken together, all zillion of them: lovely.\u00a0 Same here:\u00a0 taken as a whole, I’m still a player.<\/p>\n
I saw plenty of bald spots on many a cherry pate.\u00a0\u00a0 I know a goodly portion of the acreage on my head is likewise exposed to the world.\u00a0 I know it but I don’t yet feel it.\u00a0 In my mind I’m still the hirsute fellow I was at 25.\u00a0 I think the cherries feel the same way.\u00a0 They still walked tall, held their heads up as if they still looked like they used to.<\/p>\n
On a 51 year old, with less instant, stunning beauty to distract, you can’t help but notice a bit of paunchiness developing in the mid-regions.\u00a0 The gnarled, full-figured old cherry tree trunks were more noticeable now that the distracting, perfectly beautiful, perfect white blossoms had worn off.<\/p>\n
<\/a>A touch of noble paunch can look nice<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Big tummy, little blossom<\/p><\/div>\n
None of this is as discouraging as the lack of people there to appreciate the trees.\u00a0 I assure you there’s still plenty here to ooh and aah over, but there was a fraction of\u00a0the oohers and aahers\u00a0at the Tidal Basin today at lunch, than there was\u00a0just a week ago, just a few days ago!\u00a0 How quickly the audience tires!\u00a0 Even the painter was gone, she who had been here even in the very chilly early days when the blooms were cute little six year olds, playing and swaying by the million on branch after branch.\u00a0 Was she only interested in young, virile, perfect trees, full of white bloom, the glorious specimens of last week?\u00a0 The beauty is still here.\u00a0 The lines, the shape, the form, and even the blossoms, albeit not as white and perfect as they were, but they’re still there.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The lines: still there!<\/p><\/div>\n
We\u00a0middle-agers, though reduced a bit, still carry the shape and\u00a0the form of our younger selves.\u00a0 Hopefully still far from that inevitable woodpile, walking among these lovely middle-aged trees made me want to become a model, a performer, a 51 year-old paunchy stripper, even.\u00a0 Look at the trees!\u00a0 Look at me!\u00a0 We are still here.\u00a0 We are still vital.\u00a0 And if you look hard enough, carefully enough, you’ll see that we’re still, amazingly, surprisingly, easy on the eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I took my fifth trip to Cherry Blossom Land.\u00a0 I’m determined to see them through their annual journey from fresh-faced babies to shriveled petals on the ground.\u00a0 I arrived at the Tidal Basin during lunch and recognized the trees … Continue reading