Older

When I was young, and I saw an old person, I just saw: old.
Now, as I stagger ever closer towards dodderage myself, I only see in old people's faces the young ones they were.
This is not some major feat, of course. You just need to have lived long enough to realise that that face in the mirror is very different from the one college ID card picture you just found, but you feel just as unsure of yourself, just as callow. You just need to suddenly notice the grey hairs and fine wrinkles of your friends and yet know that their souls, like yours, are still young and wild.
You see in their children the contours that were, are, those of the smooth faces you knew, now creased by weather, by life. And you find, in your memories of the ones gone now, the youthful spirits that animated their bent bodies.
And the young ones you see now, you see in their faces their old age.