Almost Fifty

I want to roll back the clock. I was on my way to empty the garbage, and suddenly keenly aware I am almost fifty. I heard an interview with Dustin Hoffman; he said he felt more secure about his mortality when he could double his age. At age twenty, likely reach forty, at forty still possibly reach eighty. At fifty, he realized he would likely not reach a hundred: a rite of passage for him. I am yearning to be a decade younger, to buy back time I've lost to life events, to depression, especially. Stride up to a clerk on the ethereal plane, and say, firmly, "Yes, I'd like ten years. "Think quality of life," my friend, Deb, said recently, "not length of life." Just now, the swallows were darting through the trees in our garden. One flew so close to me, I almost felt the air rush back from its wings. I got to have that. Fifteen months to fifty.