do something different.
I would enjoy every second of it.
On our second afternoon there, I put on a bikini I had bought months earlier but had never had the courage to wear.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
Yes, I had wrinkles.
Yes, my body had changed.
Family
I was sixty-three, not twenty-three.
But for the first time in years, I didn’t care.
I walked onto the beach and asked my sister to take a few pictures.
“You look amazing,” she said.
I laughed.
And for those few minutes, standing barefoot in the sand with the ocean behind me, I felt completely free.
That feeling lasted until dinner.
My daughter-in-law, Jessica, had somehow seen the pictures on my sister’s phone.
Swimwear
She stared at one of them.
Then she laughed.
Not a small laugh.
A loud one.
“At your age?” she said.
Everyone at the table
