Hold My Gaze

I hold your gaze and I ask that you hold mine. I know I am brown and past my prime. I know that I seem incomplete. But I am here and I am looking over all that I can see at this time of sunset. I am looking at you. Are we not family?

Please, look past my withered bits, look past my wrinkles and the things I have forgotten. Hold my gaze so that I will know I am here and that I matter. All around me there are younger ones who move so fast and grow into things I could never imagine. If you try to explain them to me I will not understand. I want to, but I know I cannot.

The elderly live in another world. It looks like ours and it sounds like ours, and it is filled with familiar things, but also with an increasing number of unfamiliar, new things. The elder world can be like a sea in which they are set adrift with no translator, no guide, just their experience of years behind them to fill their sails and carry them forward, but sometimes experience is not enough. On some days, experience fails them and the winds that should have carried them forward dies, and they are left to float.

On those days, and (why not?) every day, look and hold the gaze of someone who is asking with their eyes for validation, for assurance, for direction. It is a small kindness we can do, to hold a gaze.

Thank you for being here, dear weed lovers.

Please come back tomorrow for a new “Weed Image of the Day” and let me know which ones you like.

We and our weeds are so much more than what we first appear to be.

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