When I Am an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple

From Celia’s Images in a Reflecting Pool: Journal Entries Inspired by A Course in Miracles. Copyright 1995.

Years ago in an especially sensitive moment, I saw a phonograph record jacket that depicted a glamorous, vivacious woman in a cherry red, sequined dress, and in a smaller picture off to one side, a subdued, paler, more timid version of the same woman holding a violin.  

I imagined that as a little child I would have wanted to grow up to be the glamorous woman, but that my parents wanted the artistic violinist.  Playing the violin had actually been one of many ambitions of my father for me.  

Looking back, I know that the path my parents set me on was what the innermost “I” wanted in my lifetime.  Certainly my talents are not “show biz.”  But there is still that urge to be a freer sort of person than would ever have passed muster in my childhood home.  

These fantasies are akin to the poem, “Warning,” in which a woman looks on her life longing to be a braver sort:  “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,” Jenny Joseph says.  

Might I take this to heart?  Isn’t there time to redress?  And shouldn’t I begin right away?

Every day is the first day of the rest of our lives.  

And possible of new beginnings.