Warts

I've had a wart on my body since I was five or six years old. It thinks it is the Enterprise boldly going where no wart has gone before. It's lived on my ankle, heel, wrist, finger, knee and is now busy evaporating off on my elbow where it has currently been residing so it can grow somewhere else. It has always slowly disappeared from one location as it starts growing on another.

Now here is the problem, it wants to move to my forehead. That little alien life form has picked my forehead as the perfect new home. I don't know a lot about being an old lady, but I do know old ladies don't want warts on their forehead. If I was twenty-two it wouldn't matter as much. People forgive a lot in a twenty-two year old, but at my age warts on the forehead, or anywhere on the face for that matter is a sign of, a sign of, well a sign of old age and witchyness.

Kids will start crying at the sight of me. Grandsons will pull away. People will point and talk behind my back. I mean people will point and talk behind my back more than they do now.

And silently the Enterprise continues it's silent persistent voyage. Can the Enterprise be destroyed?

Watching this intrepid wart move has reminded me of the quietness, the sureness, the slowness of nature. I relish watching a spider spin a web, a deer graze, a bear amble, a cat stalk, a tide come in or go out, a tree bud out in the spring. Slowly, confident in the rhythms of nature. How I admire that. How I love being a part of that -- warts and all.

Life isn't always wart free.