Transformation and the Ineluctable Signs of Ageing
by Mary Kendall

This is not my first transformation. No, it happened way back when—six decades and then some, and I find myself no longer who I thought I was just ten, twenty or even thirty years ago. Those were other lifetimes, times I lived through, times I felt so alive, enjoyed, loved, and times I remember, but those were lives I knew I had passed through completely.

I have the evidence.

Now, going further back in time—forty or fifty years ago, it all begins to change. It starts to slow down—slow—slow—slow—as if someone has put a finger out and touched the spinning world—and now it slows down enough as if I must to look for a place to rest.

This viewing backwards makes me dizzy—dizzy—dizzy enough to want to keep traveling back to the end, which in fact is the beginning, and…