Your body is good as it is because God called it good. Very good, actually. And it is still very good with its cavernous wrinkles and silver stretch marks. It is still very good with its creaking joints and the litany of scars that tell your story. It is still very good with the weight you can’t shed and the weight you can’t help but shed. It is still very good just as it is. But it is also growing old and that is very good too, but also very hard. And it is okay that it’s very hard.

On Sabbath we talk about old age, ours and our parents. We talk about theirs because they will always be 25 or 30 years older than us and as we age, they do too, as we falter, they do too, as we forget, they do too. We talk about ours because what does a person need as they grow old? Shelter. Food. Water. Love. “Will we have all that we need?” we’re asking one another because in the absence of children, will anyone care about us when we are 70 and 80 and the phone doesn’t ring and the flowers don’t come and to whom do we leave our meager earthly belongings?

I saw a mother my age complain about her stretch marks and how difficult it is to sleep. “Motherhood,” she waxes, “has changed me forever.” Another mother talks her “lost body,” and the one she doesn’t recognize anymore and tries on her pre-baby jeans every week hoping this will be the one they’ll squeeze over her widened hips and soft skin like they used to. Another one talks about her labor as if it is the hardest thing a woman can do, as if she is a superhero for having done it, but I know for a fact she has never watched yet another lost life swirl clockwise in its ceramic and watery grave and that takes a different kind of courage. That changes your body too.

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